Drednanth: A Tale of the Final Fall of Man (39 page)

Janya also transferred several dozen more volumes into her own personal shipboard library in electronic form, for continued study as they headed onwards. Hopefully, whatever social arrangement the fabricants were reaching towards would continue to develop.

It was not her intention to arrive at an
answer
about the eejits, or even develop much in the way of theories – certainly not theories that would lead to any sort of conclusive actions or predictions. It was research for the pure purpose of research, marking her findings and comparing them with those of others in comparable situations. If the developing eejit collective organisation on board the
Tramp
taught them anything, about basically
anything
, Janya considered it a win.

While she read, she worked on some of the older and more fragile books, cataloguing and reorganising them, and making some minor repairs with her personal book-repair kit that she’d brought all the way from Judon. When the time finally came for them to leave and she made the decision to stick with the
Tramp
and depart from Central, Janya was delighted to receive one of the electronic-to-hardcopy interface books as a thank-you gift from the head librarian.

Janya was still reading, swiping book after book from her own electronic library in orbit and testing the vellum interface, as the lander carried her out of Greentemple’s atmosphere. Z-Lin, Sally and Waffa were on board, with Zeegon at the controls.

The warehouses, Sally and Z-Lin had noted during their own relatively-active shore leave, were filling up on Say Sorry (Claws) and across Greentemple. Not as many ships were coming by these days, and the usual AstroCorps and Fleet cargo freighters were growing sparse. Concern was evenly divided between the possibility of some new form of starship oxygenation-and-atmosphere-scrubbing process having been discovered somewhere in the Six Species, and the ships that needed air simply being reduced radically in number. This concern was propelled to the forefront by the visitors’ news of mysterious attacks and mass-mobilisations and disappearing acts by the big swingers of the Six Species allied space forces.

Anyway, the upside of the surplus was that the
Tramp
was able to have her oxygen farm shelves replenished with fresh new blocks, and a small team of specialists had even been available to hitch a ride into orbit and consult on the renovations that had been made, the effect Thord’s presence had had on farm productivity, and how best to counteract it all. This was what most of the
others
had been doing while Janya had been having fun in the library.

A slight pall had been cast over the cooperative event by Maladin and Dunnkirk insisting strenuously that Thord be left alone and her allocated chamber – and the seed within – be avoided at all costs. This condition had been made very clear even while they were on approach to Greentemple. Janya had assumed, as had Clue, that Thord did not wish anyone to know about the seed for whatever reason. She’d made similar requests at previous stops, the last couple of which had been increasingly vehement – a far cry from PalaUdo and her soulful meeting with the Ancients of Gethsemane.

Whatever her reasons, the Commander ensured that none of the crew talked about Thord’s seed with the people of Greentemple. This made explaining where they were going and why a bit more problematic, but Janya had found that just saying ‘we have Bonshooni passengers’ was enough to make most Molren nod. The abiding Greentemple belief about walled space was not entirely mutually exclusive with generalised Bonshooni philosophy about the veil shrouding the galaxy, so there was no inconvenient need for explanation. An entire modular on a quest to the edge of the galaxy was unusual even in normal circumstances, but the addition of an aki’Drednanth to the mix dealt with that.

Janya had to take everyone’s word for all that took place on the
Tramp
, however. She turned a page, smiling at the flawless transference of data.

The Molren of Say Sorry (Claws) had been quite excited to meet an aki’Drednanth and were justifiably disappointed by her seclusion, but had assured the visitors that they understood. And there had been a happy end to the tale – Thord had emerged from her chambers and performed a lap of the oxygen farm as the specialists were preparing to leave, and had greeted everybody graciously. The added thrill of meeting her outside of her envirosuit had made up for the earlier snub.

Aside from the algae surplus from the dwindling ships, there was no sign of attack and Greentemple was entirely unaffected by the whatever-it-was that might have been going on out there, and about which they still knew far too little.

“Why, though?” Janya wondered aloud, looking up from her book as they breached atmosphere and rose smoothly into the darkness of space.

“Why what?” Zeegon looked up from the controls.

“Why hasn’t Greentemple been attacked? Is it
just
because they had no AstroCorps beacon?”

Zeegon shrugged. “Little farming backworld like this? Population of a couple of million? Not exactly a big target.”

“It sort of
is
, though,” Janya disagreed. “I read up on the Adderback Confederacy. Recent history isn’t exactly my forté, but I … took a break. For the brief time between meeting the Mary Wiig Chrysanthemum and the Adderbacks realising war with the Six Species was a
spectacularly
bad idea, they moved juggernauts into position to cut off supply lines to Greentemple and the other three big algae farm worlds. They didn’t even know what these planets
were
, they couldn’t find any of the traffic that was making transit at relative speed, it’s not like there were space convoys … but they figured out where the ships were coming and going. These worlds are the lungs of the Six Species,” Z-Lin was nodding. Janya reminded herself that the Commander had been involved more directly than most of them in the contact with and brief campaign against the Adderback Confederacy. “So now we have an enemy –
theoretically
– with coordination and foreknowledge, advanced weapons, fast ships, and basically every advantage the Adderbacks lacked. Why aren’t these worlds burned?”

“I’ve been thinking about that too,” Z-Lin said. “And I started to wonder if it didn’t come down to just that. These new guys
have
the advantages. They can take out little settlements like Bayn Balro, and big relic-bases like The Warm, right down to killing the actual
relic
inside it, all basically with the same level of effort. In short, none. The Warm was effectively taken out in a matter of hours.”

“We’re still looking at a very small sample,” Janya said, “and half of that sample, Bayn Balro,
should
have been so small that the bad guys didn’t even bother with it. They had a beacon, but…”

“They also had a couple of dozen schools of sharks in the ocean and the moon,” Waffa reminded her, “at three thousand sharks per school. Most of Bayn Balro was stuff we
didn’t
see.”

“That’s true,” Janya conceded. “But even by either of those standards, Zhraak Burns and Greentemple are pretty big.”

“Big and low-tech,” Sally said.

“Big and no Fergies,” Waffa repeated.

“You think it’s the sharks these guys are targeting?” Janya asked. Waffa shrugged.

“That doesn’t make sense either,” Z-Lin said with a shake of her head. “From what we’ve seen, most of the Fergunak got away by just … turning off their tech. Would anyone actually looking for them be fooled by that?”

“Maybe the first couple of times,” Sally said.

“Or maybe the sharks were lying about how they got away,” Zeegon suggested, “and these new bad guys are killing the other five species out from underneath the Fergies.”

“Didn’t seem to be the way it went for them at The Warm,” Waffa said. “Seemed they managed to save a couple of ships that way, and the rest of them got spaced in a bunch of ice blocks.”

“Like I keep saying,” Janya said, “we can’t form an alien invasion theory based on just
two
attacks, on such different targets. I’m not saying I want more attacks to take place, but until we know more, all we can do is guess. And places like this, of strategic value … there are just so many ways to slice this cake, so many different criteria an enemy could be using. The two attacks could be completely unrelated. The Warm might have just been the relic dying of natural causes, or some experiment gone wrong. Bayn Balro could have just been an undersea earthquake scrambling the Fergunak gridnet and making them go all feeding-frenzy. The other destruction – that we haven’t even seen – could be nothing more than the Artist’s insane ravings. And the Fleet activity we’ve seen, the Worldship movements and Separatists and MundCorp relocating, it could all be basically anything. I take it the Molren on
Bloji
and
Dark Brutan
told you nothing at Standing Wave.”

“Right,” Clue said, the memory of whatever interaction had taken place back in orbit around Devil-May-Care still putting a bitter twist in her mouth.

“And Waffa said it himself,” Janya added. “Expecting a Fergunakil to tell the truth is a good way to get yourself burned,” she paused, and added judiciously, “bitten. Drowned?”

“Nobody ever drowned in a body of water containing a Fergie,” Waffa smiled.

“Well, maybe we can ask them for more information when we catch up with them,” Z-Lin said.

“You think we will?” Janya asked.

“Sure,” Clue replied, “when they’re ready to pull us down.”

“Sounds like fun,” Sally remarked. “I hope you’ll let me go with my shoot-them-in-the-face approach when the time comes,” Z-Lin gave a short grunt of amusement.

“You think that’s what they’re doing?” Waffa asked. “Circling us?”

“I’ve been on the wrong side of Fergunak before, once or twice,” Clue said. “They don’t need to be behind us to chase us.”

It was a mere – a
mere
– two weeks from Greentemple to Burned Heart. The journey seemed to be over almost before it began, and Janya spent most of that time reading.

After about ten days in the grey of soft-space, she was visited by Thord.

“There is an aki’Drednanth living on Burned Heart,” Thord said without preamble once Janya had invited her into the library and she’d eased her way in through the requisite doorways. “Her name is Rime.”

“Yes,” Janya said, sitting back in her couch, “I’d heard. We weren’t sure if she was still there, but I suppose you can confirm … ?” Thord inclined her big round-cornered helmet slightly. “Does this … have some bearing on your mission?” Janya asked. “Is there something we ought to know about – for example – what Rime might do when we come out of soft-space?”

“No,” Thord replied, although she seemed uncertain. It was nothing in her electronically-modulated voice, of course, and Janya was no closer to reading the aki’Drednanth’s body language … but her light panel had shifted to a pale pink hue, denoting uncertainty. She was bothered about
something
. Not for the first time, Janya found herself wishing everybody on board had one of the mood indicators. “There is nothing in my actions that is proscribed by general aki’Drednanth practice. The seed, and my training with Dunnkirk and Maladin, it is … perhaps unorthodox, and questioned by factions within the wider Dreamscape, but it is not what you would consider criminal, in any way.”

“I don’t think it had occurred to anyone on board that it was,” Janya said in puzzlement, she gestured at the books on her table. “I’ve been reading about aki’Drednanth interactions with the rest of the Six Species,” she said, “and Molran, Blaran and Bonshoon experiences attaining the Dreamscape. And a bit about the art of able configuration, and the way you affected it.”

“I had noticed,” Thord said, her light shifting from pink to a warm yellow of pleasure, “that you had been studying the ways your new ables – your new eejits – had been interacting with the rest of the fabricated components on board.”

“It’s interesting,” Janya shrugged. “A way to pass the time. But you’re saying Rime – and the rest of the aki’Drednanth and the Drednanth itself – won’t have a problem with it?”

“Even if there was a conflict,” Thord said, “it would not manifest itself as an action against me, or against this crew. I would not be attacked, arrested–” here, her lower bar gave the faintest flicker, a shadow of her former amusement, “anything of the sort. This is not how we operate.”

“I understand that any sanctions for rebellion would occur while you are Drednanth,” Janya said carefully, “when you’re back in the Dreamscape between incarnations,” she hesitated. “Maybe in the form of another million-year wait before being allowed to become aki’Drednanth again?”

The pink shade of uncertainty – so much like a human blush, Janya thought, that it could hardly be a coincidence – returned. “Maybe,” she conceded. “In either case, I would not consider Rime an opponent to any …
cause
… I might be pursuing.”

“She’s sympathetic to your quest, then,” Janya concluded. Thord nodded again, although she was still signalling doubt. “So, forgive me, but what’s the problem? We’re probably not even going to stop at Burned Heart for more than a few hours. There’s nothing we need to pick up or drop off there. We might take some shore leave, spend a night, since it’s another eleven-week leg out from Burned Heart to Declivitorion. But I think the only thing that would keep us there any longer would actually be you,” she spread her hands. “If you wanted to go and pay Rime a visit, we’d basically be obligated by AstroCorps regulations to honour your request – and more than that, of course, we’d happily do so out of friendship. You haven’t seen one of your own kind since … well, since Isaz,” she concluded delicately.

Thord acknowledged this with a bow of her head. “But you know this does not matter,” she said.

“Yes,” Janya agreed. “You’re as connected as you need to be with all of your kind, both aki’Drednanth in the flesh world and Drednanth in the Dreamscape, while we’re in normal space. I guess it’s a humanocentric question, but … isn’t there any benefit in meeting up with an aki’Drednanth face-to-face? Please don’t misunderstand – I’m not asking anything so crass as whether you’d want to take a shore leave excursion for physical companionship,” she said hastily, “but if there is any benefit in meeting Rime in person…” she shrugged. “I understand she lives in the polar region of Burned Heart,” she went on, “so it might just be a benefit as simple as getting out of that suit and having a run around in a slightly wider and more varied environment than the oxygen farm.”