Drednanth: A Tale of the Final Fall of Man

by Andrew Hindle

  Zeegon lowered his face into his hands. “Oh God, not again.”

  “What sort of a detour?” Janus asked, doing his best to maintain at least a shred of positivity. “Shortcut, new mission, emergency … ?”

  “Witch hunt, wild goose chase…” Waffa put in.

  “Let’s say the Captain’s derelicty sense was tingling,” Z-Lin said, directing a stern look at the Chief of Security and Operations, “and it’s worth listening when that happens. He enacted executive protocol and changed our course – moderately, not massively – while we were at relative speed.”

  “That would require synthetic intelligence behind the wheel,” Sally said.

  “The synth’s only needed to set the protocols in place and provide a framework for the recalculation,” Z-Lin replied. “Once that was done, they could be initiated and programmed even when the computer’s on standby.”

  “So, hang on, you set it up the last time Bruce was on board?” Waffa frowned. “We were all a bit busy then, weren’t we?”

  “Captain wasn’t,” Zeegon pointed out.

  “Did you say ‘derelicty sense’?” Maladin asked hesitantly.

  “The Captain has a penchant for deep space salvage,” Zeegon explained.

  “We think it’s something to do with his previous job in waste management,” Sally added. “Or was that his next career step?”

  “Yeah, alright,” Clue laid a hand on the table, not quite slapping but nevertheless placing, quite firmly. “That’s enough comedy. For the moment, the main issue is Þursheim, why we’re not there, and how much we all wanted to be there. Right? I understand this.”

  “Do you?” Sally asked, and Janus cringed a little at her tone. It was fairly soft, but it told him that Sally wanted a fight. And Sally usually got a fight when she wanted one. It was one of her most conspicuous skills. “Do you understand how Contro feels, being this close to his home for the first time in six years?” they’d actually celebrated this little milestone on Prufrock just before shipping out. “And then to have it snatched away right when he thought we’d be arriving?”

  Does anyone understand how Contro feels? Janus thought. About anything? Ever?

  To be honest, most of the other crewmembers had been away from home – if ‘home’ even had any meaning to them – for longer than Contro. And Contro hadn’t seemed any more excited or happy than usual as they departed Prufrock and turned their metaphorical prow towards Þursheim, although that wasn’t really saying much when talking about a man whose emotional range seemed to be somewhere between a solid 9½ and 10 on the cheerful enthusiasm scale. Part of the reason they’d celebrated his ‘sixth Trampiversary’ had been because he was so cheerful about it and had invented the word ‘Trampiversary’.

  “No, I don’t,” Clue replied, managing to make this sound an awful lot like does anyone understand how Contro feels, about anything, ever without actually saying the words. She looked across at Contro, who was – unsurprisingly – sitting and smiling. “I don’t imagine it’s much fun, but I’m not going to pretend I know how it feels. I am sorry, though. I would personally have preferred to go to Þursheim and get our ship fixed and our crew filled back out a little, even if it meant Contro – or anyone else – disembarking.”

  “You’d’ve preferred that to parking out here in the middle of nowhere to check out a possible derelict?” Sally said with exaggerated surprise. “Really?”

  Clue didn’t rise to the bait. “Yes. Okay, cards on the table – yes, we really do need Contro on board and it’s that much easier to manage if we don’t actually stop at his front door,” she sighed and tapped her organiser, then looked up at Contro, then back to Sally. “While he is a civilian and can disembark any time, the Captain was of the opinion that he would be less likely to do so if he still needed a relative-capable craft to get him to Þursheim.”

  “Was the Captain also aware that this is what we in law enforcement call ‘kidnapping’?” Sally said.

  “Oh, so suddenly you’re in law enforcement again?” Z-Lin countered.

  “Now now,” Janus quavered, “let’s stay cool.”

  “Alright, look at it this way,” Z-Lin folded her hands and looked down at them for a moment, before taking a deep breath and raising her eyes once again to address the crew one at a time. “We don’t know if Þursheim has been attacked. We don’t know what sort of situation they’re in.”

  “And?” Waffa asked, at least managing to keep his tone civil. Janus had to admire that, since arguably Waffa was the one guy who did know his home had been attacked, even if his family had probably escaped.

  “This is … right now, we’ve got a bit of a Shrödinger’s cat thing going on,” Z-Lin said, looking as though she regretted putting this line of thought to words even as she was doing so. “As long as we’re out here, we don’t know for sure. About Þursheim, about Aquilar, about the Fleet. And we may be better off not knowing. We have our mission. You know – until observed, both states are true until we–”

  “So, what, we just pretend the Six Species isn’t under attack?” Sally snapped. “Bury our heads in the sand and just go on with the mission?”

  “Look, I’m not talking about–”

  “You’re talking about intentionally keeping us all in the dark about whether our homes have been destroyed or not,” Sally suddenly roared. Janus jumped in his seat a little, but even Z-Lin looked mildly grateful that Sally had interrupted her clearly-poorly-thought-out justification ramble. “We’re not Corps, you can’t keep us on this ship against our will.”

  “I know,” Clue said, steely, “but this is an AstroCorps ship, and all command and tactical information is dictated by the officers. Specifically the Captain. And any civilian who doesn’t like it is free to swim for it.”

  “The God damned Captain,” Sally growled. “You know what I–”

  “I’m curious what Thord thinks of this detour,” Janus interrupted before Sally could say anything she might regret. All eyes turned toward the massive envirosuit hunched at the table, directly to Z-Lin’s left and opposite the crew. Dunnkirk and Maladin were sitting close by her sides, looking rather like ornamental armrests on some sort of bizarre aki’Drednanth throne.

  “Do not involve me in your dispute,” Thord pronounced, although Janus saw that her eye-panels were indicating sympathy. “My interest is beyond Declivitorion, but how we get there is a matter I leave in your hands.”

  Oh well, Janus thought. Worth a try.

  “Technically speaking, Þursheim would have been the detour,” Z-Lin said. “This is closer to the straight-line route. But no, before you say it, this isn’t a shortcut. Not exactly. I think we’re all better off without those, after the bonefields.”

  Janus winced in spite of himself. Nobody talked about the bonefields, although he was pretty sure he wasn’t alone in thinking about them. He’d been acting ship’s counsellor for two years – actually closer to three – and a lot of terrible things had happened that had almost brought the crew to his door. But they weren’t the worst. The bonefields was one of those things that he never expected anyone to sit down in his office and talk about.

  Some things were best left in the past where they couldn’t do you any more harm.

  “Yes,” Sally agreed. She was still clearly angry but at least the reminder of the bonefields had cooled her down a little, the way a bucket of icy water will … especially when you subsequently discover that the water was full of leeches and they’re wriggling into your clothing. “Let’s see if we can do without shortcuts.”

  “This one, though, I’m actually on board with if you’ll just listen to me,” Clue paused for breath, and the crew grudgingly waited. “Decay,” she said, turning to her right, “you picked up some comms traffic when we came out of relative. Yes?”

  “Yes,” Decay, who had been sitting quietly and tapping on the pad in his lower hands while the debate raged around him, raised his eyes and nodded. “Not beacon level stuff, but let’s say the loudest sig
ns of high technology since we left Seven Widdershins. And…” he paused, and gave a little wave of his upper left hand to allow Clue to continue.

  “It’s the Boonie,” Z-Lin said. There was sudden silence around the table. “It’s Boonie’s Last Stand. The rest of her. The parts that didn’t get taken to Jauren Silva when–”

  “We know what you meant,” Zeegon said, “this is a silence of gobsmacked and slightly horrified astonishment, not confusion.”

  “My silence is confusion,” Maladin raised a tentative hand.

  “Oh, right,” Zeegon withdrew.

  “Long story short,” Z-Lin said, “and I wasn’t sure how much the others had told you about this so sorry about leaving you in the dark, but Boonie’s Last Stand is – was – a synthetic intelligence hub manufactory we encountered shortly before meeting you three. The manufactory had been involved in an unlicensed experiment, and the majority of her mass had been … transported … to a planet surface. This left, presumably, some percentage of her back out in her original location.”

  “Transported?” Dunnkirk frowned, as much as the perpetual Molranoid smile of the Bonshoon’s face allowed it.

  “An experimental drive,” Z-Lin said, “practically instantaneous but too exotic to be practical.”

  Thord straightened with a soft meshing of her envirosuit’s plates, her light panels blazing a bright and unexpected white.

  Understanding, Janus thought, heck, borderline exultation.

  “This thing is known to us,” she said, and even Maladin and Dunnkirk turned in surprise. “It has come and gone, many times since the Great Ice was young, as people dig into chasms they should not. And we hear it. Sometimes it is a great howl, sometimes – as we felt in recent months – it is a mere whisper. But always, it is a promise of oblivion. And always, it is silenced. By those who dig, or by those who watch the diggers from afar. If you were a part of this, and silenced the whisper before it could grow, you have our thanks. And my respect.”

  “Um,” Z-Lin said a little awkwardly into the silence, “you’re welcome, I think. I don’t know if we’re necessarily talking about the same thing here, but…”

  “It is a thing we call the Dreamless Void,” Thord said, “and it is an existence beneath this one, in which nothing has ever lived, in which past and future and thought as we know them have never occurred, and a darkness beyond darkness–”

  “Yeah, we’re talking about the same thing,” Zeegon said.

  “Sometimes, people try to travel through it,” Thord said, “thinking that the lack of physical laws will be easier to navigate than this world and its chains that bind.”

  “Crazy people,” Waffa said, “right?”

  “Usually,” Thord said blandly, “yes.”

  “Aki’Drednanth have never mentioned this before,” Janya said, “to the Six Species. The Dreamless Void. Have they?”

  Thord shook her head, then directed her helmeted gaze along the table. “It is my understanding that you will understand why not, since you have experienced the Dreamless Void for yourselves. Those who have not visited the Dreamless Void, we have decided, ought not be told of it. Curiosity would overcome caution.”

  “You can’t un-have a dream,” Z-Lin said softly.

  “We have not been through the Dreamless Void,” Maladin said.

  “I think you can be trusted with this knowledge,” Thord said in amusement.

  “So you felt it,” Z-Lin said, “this last time the underspace drive – the Dreamless Void – was discovered, and we un-discovered it?” Thord nodded again. “And this time was pretty minor?”

  “The last time, almost four hundred thousand years ago, was deafening,” Thord said. “The Dreamscape was almost swallowed.”

  “Wow,” Decay murmured.

  “You did well,” Thord noted.

  “Yay us,” Janus said.

  “So, anyway, that was what this inventor was trying to do at Boonie’s Last Stand,” Clue said. “The guts of the manufactory were pulled out and dropped on a planet who-knows-how-far-away, and the rest was left behind.”

  “And this is what we have found?”

  Z-Lin nodded. “We were not entirely clear on how long ago the Boonie had sustained her damage, but there was a good chance AstroCorps Repair and Recovery would be here already, making repairs or even bringing the manufactory back online by now. So it would be a better place to get repairs of our own, and information, than Þursheim which – let’s be honest here – is a bit of a Mygonite commune.”

  “Jolly nice place though,” Decay said, turning towards Contro with a grin. “Right Contro?”

  “Ha ha ha! What? Sorry, I was looking at this piece of fluff! It’s a different colour to the actual wool that makes up my cardigan! How do you suppose that happens? Ha ha ha! And do you chaps hear it in the Dreamscape when it does? Against the natural order, if you ask me!”

  “We thought there might still be an AstroCorps Rep and Rec presence here,” Clue said firmly, “but to be honest, it was a bit of a slim hope. The Artist had been following us for who-knows how long, and that must have been after he went solo from the Boonie. And he didn’t find us straight away … still, we all know the speed at which news gets around and action gets taken in space, so there was a chance.”

  “This is – was – a small, quiet facility,” Decay said, “even considering the general Six Species low-impact philosophy. It may not have been missed for a while. The people on board were all long-term and not about to be missed by their families. On the other hand, one of them might have been overdue for a home-visit and so the whole disaster would have been reported almost immediately.”

  “So it turns out they came and cleaned up fast?” Waffa guessed.

  “Looks like they’ve tidied up, mothballed the place, tagged the wreckage and moved on,” Z-Lin confirmed. “Leaving nothing but a whisper beacon behind.”

  “But that’s just the Boonie,” Decay said, “we got that nod once we got in close enough. It was the shouter we heard first.”

  The crew perked up still further on hearing this. A shouter meant an alien. Not Six Species, and probably not Damorakind. The so-called ‘Sevenths’, ‘Sevens’ or ‘Seveners’, or less charitably the ‘dumbler-folk’ races of the galaxy, were advanced enough to be out in space but not advanced enough to know that unmasked communications were like a dog-whistle to the Cancer. This constituted a fairly narrow cross-section of the possible life-form spectrum, so not many of them had ever been found. There were a few, though. Species allied to, or known by, the Six Species but for various reasons not yet in a position to upgrade the alliance to ‘the Seven Species’. At least until they stopped shouting.

  Of course, this far from the Core it was probably safe enough to prattle all up and down the bandwidth. At the speed of light, most of that noise would diffuse into the radioactive background scream of the stars before anyone else heard it, and it would be millennia before it reached dangerous space. Unless – as the Tramp just had – someone happened by.

  “So we’re all probably thinking the same thing right now,” Z-Lin said. “Is this a known Sevener, or a completely new Sevener, or is it perhaps our enigmatic maybe-Damorakind-maybe-not enemy, in the flesh?”

  “Actually,” Waffa said, “I was wondering what the odds were of us, the Boonie, and this third party all running into each other in deep space like this.”

  “I was wondering exactly why the Hell you didn’t lead with the shouter,” Sally grumped, “instead of letting me chew you out about the freaking detour.”

  Z-Lin graced Sally with one of her invisible smirks. “You looked like you needed a good chew.”

  Sally grunted appreciatively. “Well we’re still going to have words about this apparent policy of taking the back-roads and avoiding all possibility of repair, re-crew and information,” she said, “but in the meantime, dish-dish-dish.”

  “Hopefully I can kill two birds with one explanation,” Z-Lin said, “but as to the chances of us all runn
ing into each other … us and the Boonie, not so astronomical,” she said. “We got the station’s location from the rest of the Boonie.”

  “So we were actually looking for it?” Sally asked.

  “That’s attributing maybe too much intent to the detour,” Clue admitted. “It really was more of a…”

  “Tingling derelicty sense?” Janus suggested.

  Z-Lin snapped her fingers and pointed at him in agreement. “Now, our third party,” she went on, “that’s more tantalising. And, dare I say, a good enough reason for a detour all on its own?”

  “Hear hear!” Contro exclaimed.

  Z-Lin, turning her head to make unequivocal eye-contact with Sally, swung her finger to point at Contro. The message was clear. Approval of the only native Þursheimer on board gives consent. Sally rolled her eyes and leaned back in her chair, giving up for now.

  “So, our loud-mouthed prospective Seventh Species buddy,” Zeegon leaned forward as if to take Sally’s place. “What do we know?”

  “We’re still well out of range for most data retrieval,” Decay said, “and so far it looks as though it hasn’t registered our arrival. It’s definitely a ship, parked inside the cavity the Artist carved in the Boonie when he went solo. So we’re not getting a good look at it.”

  “That’s actually smart,” Sally spoke up grudgingly. “Or completely accidental.”

  “A bit of both, probably,” Decay said, consulting his pad. “The comms signals it’s blasting out suggest it has no idea what it’s doing out here, but the way it’s parked shows a certain experience in being a furtive bugger.”

  “But it showed up some time after AstroCorps Rep and Rec left?” Waffa asked.

  “Impossible to say,” Decay replied. “At the moment all we know is that they mothballed the wreck, and the shouter’s here. There might have been a whole fleet and for whatever reason they just agreed to leave this one behind. We’ll have to consult the logs, and hopefully talk to our noisy friend before we know anything.”