“He’s adorable,” Maladin said, seeming genuinely taken with the daffy physicist. “But no, we’re most certainly Bonshooni. Quite trim Bonshooni too, if I do say so myself,” he ran his left hands down over the curve of his barrel-like belly.
“Decay said Bonshooni couldn’t join an aki’Drednanth Dreamscape!” Contro exclaimed. “He said they didn’t have the powers of concentration!”
“Okay,” Decay pulled his niqi forcefully back down over his face as Maladin and Dunnkirk laughed uproariously. “This ‘Decay’ fellow sounds like a weapons-grade stonk-nozzle.”
“It’s okay,” Maladin said, patting the Blaran on the back and then turning back to an unconcerned Contro, who had gone back to playing with the wristwatch he had unaccountably managed to leave on the outside of his thermal. “He’s quite right. Bonshooni are generally hopeless at that sort of meditational hoo-hah, and we’re no exception. My Dunnkirk and I, we are the first, as far as we know, and we’re still not entirely sure why. We cannot do it well, and not alone. We have to share the load.”
“We are…” Dunnkirk said, then faltered. He snapped the fingers of both right hands, and then pointed with his right hands swiftly between himself and Maladin. “P’bruz,” he concluded, and didn’t seem to have an attempted translation ready for that one.
“We are close,” Maladin provided. Janya didn’t think that was what p’bruz translated as – and she didn’t think it meant brother, either – but she didn’t make an issue of it.
“Impressive,” Decay said, inclining his head to the Bonshooni and the aki’Drednanth with humble respect.
“So,” Z-Lin turned back to Thord as well, “okay. You’ve created an ark of Drednanth knowledge, and you want to send it out into the gulf?” Thord spread her giant hands in agreement. “Is this a preservation act? Are you worried that this might be some new weapon, or some expansionist move from the Cancer? They’re pushing out hard, maybe, wiping out everyone at last?” she gestured at the ice. “Is this a monument, an epitaph, something like that?”
“The Drednanth have an understanding with Damorakind,” Thord said quite unselfconsciously. “If the Cancer spreads, we will be spared. The seed is merely a tradition, a precaution against accident and disaster. It is nothing to do with these attacks. It was made, and I began this journey, long before The Warm was struck.”
“Did you survive this attack because of that understanding?” Z-Lin asked, never one to avoid the difficult, unpopular questions. “Were you spared?”
Maladin and Dunnkirk both puffed up indignantly – indeed, almost literally – at this, and Acting Controller Bendis stiffened. Thord’s eye panels merely changed, the central bar shifting to a warm amber hue. Janya quickly looked down and scanned for this configuration on her pad, where she had already navigated to a standard aki’Drednanth signal lexicon. Yes – it should mean respectful acknowledgement of a difficult question or point. She lowered the pad, and noted that the Bonshooni possibly-but-probably-not-brothers had also seen the change and had immediately relaxed. She wished everyone had these displays.
“I believe it was pure luck that we were not near the surface when the attack occurred,” Thord said, “and that we were not near any large populations, and that the seed was undamaged when this area was left open to vacuum. It is, after all, ice – and suited to the chill of space. I do not believe that this was the work of Damorakind,” she stretched slightly in her envirosuit, bulking huge and heavy against the wall of the tent, “so no understandings we have with them will serve to spare us. If this was not Damorakind, or if this was Damorakind and the understanding is no more, this seed may well be our epitaph. But that was not its intent when we began its construction.”
Z-Lin nodded thoughtfully. “What does your connection with the other aki’Drednanth – and the Drednanth – tell you about other settlements throughout the Six Species?” she asked. “Are these isolated attacks?”
Thord did not answer for a long time. When she did, her voice was soft. Janya judged that it was a manual volume adjustment.
“Aki’Drednanth are not widespread on these worlds,” she said, “but many of the settlements where aki’Drednanth gather … seem to remain untouched. The Great Ice remains untouched. These are not isolated attacks, however. Nor are they new. And the Dreamscape does not work like a newsnet.”
“What about the Fleet?” Janus asked. “And Aquilar? We heard it was … gone, or something.”
“What?” Bendis exploded.
“Where did you hear this?” Thord asked.
“Unsubstantiated reports,” Z-Lin replied, favouring Janus with an unreadable look from behind her niqi that nevertheless managed to make the ship’s counsellor hunch his shoulders and shrink back, “but they understandably have the crew on edge. If you had any corroborating or contrary evidence…”
“I am sorry,” Thord said. “The Dreamscape does not operate this way. The Fleet by its very nature is elusive and ever-changing, and Aquilar … it is not our place. It is not our function. Aquilar is a complex psychological event.”
“That’s probably the best description of the place I’ve ever heard,” Decay remarked.
“Look,” Bendis said, still a little shaky, “even as relatively close to the Big A as we are, we have to depend on a bloody pony express of information finding its way here. You know how difficult it is to get reliable intel about anything more than about a thousand light-years away. And that’s before we even start giving the time of day to panicky rumours about some bastard alien invasion fleet out there … eating the ponies.”
“Okay,” Z-Lin said again, “nothing we can do about the information blackout or Aquilar. We’re eighteen thousand light years from the edge. Even at maximum relative, that’s a solid year and a half of flying,” she paused. “That’s assuming you want to fly to the edge of the stellar plane, of course, rather than just…” she made a little zip gesture with a hand, cutting upwards. “Pretty short trip to the last stars if we go that way. Never heard of anyone going to those edges, though.”
“The space arbitrarily designated ‘above’ and ‘below’ the galaxy poses the same issues as the spaces between galaxies,” Thord said with a light flicker of her lower panels, “in that travelling into it, and through it, is challenging.”
Janya nodded to herself. She’d never really done much research into extragalactic travel, but she knew the basics. Transpersion engines didn’t work properly out there, making relative speed impossible. And if you couldn’t fly at relative speed, you might as well get out and swim towards the next galaxy over. Not that relative speed was much better – a million or two light years, at ten or fifteen thousand times light speed, was still a couple of centuries of non-stop flight. Feasible for Molranoids, perhaps, but not humans.
As to what made it difficult for transpersion, well. Opinion was divided there. Some people said it was the dark matter that made up most of the galactic mass-sphere, or otherwise the simple lack of stellar matter that the engines somehow used to drive the transpersion reaction. Or of course it could be the veil that the Bonshooni believed in.
“With the added disadvantage of not actually being all that far from the Core,” Clue added in agreement. “Even if you have an arrangement with the Cancer, we don’t.”
“Indeed. However, flying to the edge of the spiral and casting the seed out offers the greatest chance for it to reach the greatest distance into space, actually outside of this galaxy’s sphere. The edges anywhere but at the metaphorical equator are too…” Thord revolved a massive gauntleted hand, searching for the word.
“Exotic,” Decay suggested tactfully.
“Yes. Interference with the relative drive, the engines, the crew. Travelling along the disc, through stellar space, allows a maximum distance from the Core under shipboard power, and a good start for the seed as we send it on its way.”
“Alright,” Clue said. “We have systems damage that we’re not going to be able to fix here. Our next stop was prob
ably going to be deeper in,” she consulted her pad. “You said you came from Ildarheim? That wouldn’t have been much help, but there are bigger ports not far from … okay,” she shook her head and looked up, “even if they’re all still there, it would be weeks out of our way and aki’Drednanth needs are priority zero, as the good Acting Controller says,” she slipped her pad into a pocket on her thermal, and folded her arms as she looked at the seed. “Plenty of places on an outbound route where we can stop and try our luck,” she went on, “with minimal detouring. I’ll inform the Captain and we’ll hammer out a route with Waffa.”
“Thank you, Commander Clue.”
“And then we’ll figure out how to get this into the Tramp,” Z-Lin went on. “Whole.”
“The gravity’s basically nonexistent,” Decay said, looking up as if he could see through the tent roof. “We can probably just fly her overhead, turn off the bubble, and skyhook the whole thing directly into the hold.”
“The tent floor can be folded up into a sling,” Maladin said helpfully, pointing.
They went back outside, and spent a few moments studying the tent fittings and their potential for affixing tow cables.
“What about you guys?” Z-Lin said to the Bonshooni. “I assume you have some luggage?”
“A few belongings,” Maladin replied with a nod. “We do not have much.”
“We are asceto,” Dunnkirk added, and Janya fancied she could translate that one without help. Of course, luggage only really became a burden once they got back onto the Tramp’s gravity exchange, and then it was going to be their passengers’ problem anyway. Aki’Drednanth traditionally didn’t carry much in the way of luggage, relying only on the small compartments in their envirosuits. Thord was clearly no exception, unless you wanted to count the seed itself, and the Bonshooni were following her lead.
“We have bags, here in this cabin,” Maladin, ears folded tightly against the cold, bounced easily across the warmium ground to a neighbouring structure and flung open its door. Z-Lin glanced inside incuriously, then went back to the tent.
“And that’s all?” she asked, pulling out her communicator again.
“And these,” Dunnkirk pointed at a pair of large metal crates Janya had noticed in passing, lying frost-coated against the outside of the seed tent. They were each about fifteen feet long and a little over four feet on a side, almost as tall as she was. Something about the way they were lying …
Decay had seen it too. “Are they sleeper pods?” the Blaran asked.
“With independent power supplies,” Maladin nodded. “They were right up here in the bubble, as you see, it’s a miracle they weren’t destroyed. Dunnkirk says it’s more likely that they were just overlooked because they were deactivated and stored, same as most of the rest of the stuff that survived. But still, fortunate that they weren’t damaged.”
“Are you intending to sleep the entire journey?” Clue asked. “I mean, it’d save us food and air, but it’s really not necessary…”
The Bonshooni smiled and shook their heads.
“When Thord sends out this seed,” Maladin explained, confirming Janya’s suspicions, “she will leave her suit behind and travel with the seed. She will return to Drednanth, of course, in the cold and vacuum, but will also remain with the seed, a connection between the seed and the greater Dreamscape. And we will travel with the seed as well. As sleepers, not dead – we are not able to join the Dreamscape in the same way aki’Drednanth do when they return – but we have experimented with these pods and customised the vitals. We will sleep, as the Molran race in the Worldship holds, and we will join and merge in this way.”
“I had no idea that was possible,” Janya admitted. “But then, there’s a lot I don’t know about sleeper technology.”
“It is something we have pioneered, in a sense,” Maladin said proudly. “The pod slows down and even stops many processes, but we have found that the freezing process – it is not freezing in the literal sense, but the analogy is sound – actually brings our brains into a closer approximation of the aki’Drednanth configuration. We do not remain conscious, but we retain contact with Thord. As long as we are in the Dreamscape when the pod is activated.”
“We do much experiment,” Dunnkirk said, with a laugh. Maladin laughed as well.
“Experimental fun with sleeper pods,” Z-Lin said, her face unreadable behind the mask. “Sounds awesome. Let’s get to work then.”
After a brief time finalising their loading plans, the crew headed back into the blessed relative warmth of the tunnels. Thord and the two Bonshooni p’bruz stayed behind to finish packing and preparing, and Z-Lin directed the rest of them to return to the ship.
“Of course, if any of you want to, you can stay out and see what sort of R&R The Warm has available,” she told them as they rattled back towards the docking array, “or help out in any capacity you feel you can. Most of those, I would think, would involve our shipboard resources but you do what you think is best. Plus, you’re not Corps crewmembers so obviously you’re free to disembark and stay here.”
“Can’t imagine why any of you would,” Bendis said genially, “frankly I think your biggest problem is going to be getting out of here without a massive refugee surplus. But I…” he paused, flipped his pad up into his hand, and pecked at it with a finger. “Huh.”
“Problem?” Clue asked.
“No, I guess not. Just got a message,” Lou said, glancing up at her in surprise. “Your Captain’s come aboard and is waiting in my office to have a private word.”
“I told you he’d probably disembark in his own time and contact you,” Z-Lin said with aplomb.
“Well, yeah, but…” Lou looked embarrassed, and tapped briskly at his pad and spun it back into his pocket to disguise his discomfort. “To be honest, I’d sort of assumed … with your drastic crew reductions, I’d assumed a sort of an XO-override situation.”
Clue gave a slight smile. “In the Corps, we call it a–”
“–Draka scenario,” she and Bendis finished together, and the Acting Controller grinned. “Yeah,” he went on, “I was wondering if you were just maintaining a convenient fiction to keep things together. Sorry about that.”
“No need,” Z-Lin said, “it’s not as if it affected your conduct. And let’s face it, even with the Captain we’re massively undermanned. An act like that wouldn’t achieve much, one way or the other.”
They ascended back into the spar where the Tramp was docked.
WAFFA
Waffa once again found himself in the uncomfortable position of having to converse with a Fergunakil giela. This time it was fully articulated.
The deceptively small robot was clearing crushed bulkheads and opening out sections of corridor as other robots – automated non-remote-controlled maintenance drones – on the far side of the emergency seals repaired so-called ‘hurricane damage’ caused by venting atmosphere and flying architecture. It was too sensitive a task to fully automate, and too heavy for anything but a machine to perform. A single mistake in the timing and procedures, and the entire sector could depressurise. Again. At least as far out as the nearest set of intact seals, which amounted to quite a volume – and volume, most importantly, that currently contained Waffa.
To its credit, the shiny, spindly little machine with the unsettling double-headed erection had not depressurised them, despite the fact that it would pose no risk to the giela and would probably be funny for the Fergunakil with which it was connected to watch. Waffa reminded himself that the shark on the far end of the device was most likely dying in a frigid slice of water, in a broken habitat that was slowly turning into a comet.
He even managed to dredge up some sympathy, although under the circumstances he couldn’t have said absolutely-for-certain that it wasn’t just projected self-pity.
The half-mile of spar on the far side of the collapse was devoid of life. The robots were opening it back out and clearing it of broken modulars and residences because there were docks
and a power transformer out there. Which meant that more modulars might feasibly be able to dock if more ever showed up, and the current survivors would be able to supply power more evenly and with more oomph to the rest of the inhabited areas of The Warm in the meantime. Maybe even boost the existing system’s stability enough to restore liveability to at least part of the Chalice, which would probably be enough to keep the remaining Fergies swimming.
At the end of that half-mile, where the Boco Pano Chrysanthemum that housed his family home had once been, there was nothing at all. And no survivors had logged in from the area. Not even any comms had been logged from the area.
“And this is the full list of survivors?” he asked, thumbing through the list on his wristwatch. He’d already realised that the eighteen human names there were completely unfamiliar to him, and the rest were actually able designations.
“So far,” the Fergie said, with a forgivable lack of interest.
“And there are no more big groups of survivors anywhere?” he insisted. “I mean, big areas that still need to be cleared or opened out, that might have survivors in?”
“There are no more areas of any significant size,” the Fergunakil said. “The last peak in that bell-curve was the second able nursery we found, and that was the last of those. The rest are all gone. The survivor count has been tailing off since well before that. It reached practical zero for humans a long time ago, and for Fergunak before that since we know exactly how many water volumes there are. There are no hab areas left to open back up, and the rest are frozen, or vacuum, or both. It’s not likely for us even to find Molranoids now.”
“Damn it,” Waffa murmured hollowly. With fingers that were numb without any help from the cold, he entered this information superfluously into his file for the reports he would no doubt be filling in for the next few hours. “Damn it.”
Drednanth: A Tale of the Final Fall of Man Page 11
