Drednanth: A Tale of the Final Fall of Man (18 page)

Clue cleared her throat. “The Captain might not even–”

The door opened.

It opened on gaping darkness, and even though Zeegon restrained himself from craning and peering, he knew it would do no good anyway. The Captain’s chambers were expansive, taking up an arc that filled about a third of the entire dome level, and if the entryway wasn’t illuminated then you weren’t going to see diddly-squat.

Thord, Maladin and Dunnkirk stepped into the darkness – the aki’Drednanth
almost
scraped either side of the doorway with her envirosuit on the way through, but was well-accustomed to moving about in a world a few sizes too small for her – and vanished. The door closed.

An awkward three minutes and twenty-seven seconds followed.

“You might want to consider returning to your posts,” Z-Lin said, without much hope in her voice that Zeegon could detect. “This might take a while.”

“We’re not flying anywhere just yet,” Zeegon said, maintaining his innocent performance, “and I finished the last package for the Molren ahead of schedule just so I could try my hand at this diplomacy thing,” he’d been helping a couple of the Eshret-bound Molren to pre-check and pack up a series of lightweight vehicles they’d found in a gutted old warehouse on The Warm, which they believed would make serviceable dune buggies.

“I’m Chief Tactical Officer,” Sally said stoutly, “this
is
my post.”

Clue gave a scarcely-audible sigh and they went back to waiting.

After the three minutes and twenty-seven seconds had elapsed, the door slid back open and Thord, Maladin and Dunnkirk re-emerged. The aki’Drednanth’s ‘mood bars’ had shifted, Zeegon noticed, from a cheerful triple blue-green to a pair of pale pink lines – the uppermost bar was entirely dark. He wasn’t sure what it meant, but he committed it to memory and looked it up later. Thord was deeply perturbed, annoyed about something but not angry. Still, for an aki’Drednanth Zeegon supposed ‘annoyed’ was enough, and he was glad in hindsight that he hadn’t been able to identify the code at the time.

It soon returned, however, to her apparently-customary triple-aquamarine.

“You are strange people,” was all she said.

Thord moved into the oxy farm quarters they’d created for her, and surprisingly so too did her Bonshooni companions with their minimal belongings and pair of sleeper pods. Or perhaps it wasn’t so surprising. Contro had regained his quarters from the Bayn Balro refugees but had cheerfully agreed to give them all back – plus a few more – to house the new Molran passengers, who were more numerous but rather more self-contained than their last load of passengers. Zeegon had to admit that if it came down to a choice between living in the Contro Tangle with a bunch of Molran survivalists, and bunking down in a forty-below-zero farm hangar with a giant ice cube and a psychic yeti, he’d
really
have to sleep on it.

Not long after that, they were ready to leave.

Z-LIN

The
Tramp
accelerated steadily away from The Warm, into the dark cold of the system beyond the orbiting relic, and prepared to jump to relative speed.

Maladin had joined Clue on the bridge, by invitation. Dunnkirk had remained in the oxygen farm with Thord, pleading a general lack of interest in watching space go past the windows. Maladin was standing politely by the entrance, trying to keep as far out of the way as a Bonshoon possibly could.

Mortelion Arbus So, the appointed ‘representative’ of their forty new Molran passengers, was also present on the bridge. She, unlike Maladin, was standing beside Z-Lin’s auxiliary command console and looking very much as though any instance of her being in anyone’s way would turn out to be a mildly-amusing misunderstanding for which ‘anyone’ would shortly end up apologising.

She hadn’t commented on Decay’s presence on the bridge, although the Blaran himself was standing rather pointedly at-attention and eyes-front at his comms station.

“I am surprised there were not more eligible AstroCorps people among the Molran survivors,” Arbus So said as The Warm’s sun rolled away underneath them and they curved out of the system’s orbital plane. “We had large non-civilian representation before the attack, and statistically there ought to have been at least a couple of dozen among the survivors. Instead, there were only two that I know of. I imagine you would have contacted them.”

“We did,” Z-Lin replied, a little uncomfortable about saying so in front of Decay. He’d
known
, of course, and he hadn’t objected, and it wasn’t as if Molran crewmembers would have affected his practical standing in any way, but it was still something she’d have preferred to avoid talking about any further. AstroCorps Molren returning to active duty on board would automatically have meant – by long-standing regulation – that no Blaran crewmember could subsequently be granted any sort of field commission or promotion, and Clue had been through too much with General Moral Decay (Alcohol) to be entirely happy with that arrangement. “Ensign Harold Danaclef declined our offer due to family commitments on the settlement…”
as well as a fervent off-the-record resolution to never go into space again
, she added silently, “…and Commander Archdrake Gonsaal regretfully informed us that he did not intend to come out of retirement until his Third Prime,”
and
that
wasn’t due to arrive for another three or four hundred years
.

“Ah yes, old Archie,” Arbus So said with a thin smile. It seemed to be the only kind of smile the Molran was capable of, Clue had decided after a few brief meetings. It was likely that she had taken some elementary ‘Dealing With Humans, Bonshooni and Other Animals’ course as part of her application to relocate to The Warm’s research community, and had learned that humans got ‘nervous’ when a Molranoid showed too much ‘fang’. The smile looked rehearsed. “A colourful character, indeed. I have actually met him on three separate occasions, at relocation symposia. A staunch supporter of the lobby to leave The Warm where it is rather than undertake to move it to the Eternal Prime settlement system. One cannot help but wonder, had we moved the relic to the same system as its alleged counterpart Eternal Prime, whether The Warm and all its inhabitants would still be alive. Still, that is conjecture and by no means a reflection on his character and agenda,” she added in the cool Molran equivalent of hasty reassurance, “which I found to be intelligent, sharply-expressed and academically sound. He would have been quite a good fit with your small and – forgive me – idiosyncratic crew,” she was very clearly looking at the helmsman at this point, and the large green weasel sitting on his shoulder.

That was one argument Z-Lin had lost, although it had not really been Zeegon’s fault. He’d agreed to stow Boonie out of the way and put forth as professional and near-AstroCorps-y a front as possible, but Boonie had a penchant for not staying stowed.

Plus, Z-Lin had to admit, she’d probably subconsciously
wanted
the regulation-demolishing ship’s pet to make an appearance. Maybe if there
had
been a real AstroCorps presence on The Warm, things would have been different. Maybe.

Right, Clue nodded to herself, so – Arbus So had known Gonsaal. Which meant, she was forced to conclude, that Arbus So had
not
known Harold Danaclef, which in turn meant that she’d actually
researched
the AstroCorps numbers, in order to bring up in conversation the
Tramp
’s failure to recruit the two survivors. In order to … what?

She told herself that she’d been dealing with Blaren and Bonshooni too long, and it may have coloured her perceptions of Molren. Not everything was a mind-game or a power-play.

“Of course,” Arbus So quickly disabused Clue of any delusions of hypervigilance, “he would have outranked you, which must have placed you in a … conflicted position, as recruiting officer.”

“What
I
think must have been a conflict,” Sally said into the sudden tension and before Zeegon or Decay could open their mouths, “is the Molran leadership on The Warm letting an aki’Drednanth travel without at least a few attendants – especially since we’re leaving all of you guys on Eshret.”

“Nah, if we’d given a bunk to every Molran who’d wanted to hang out with Thord,” Zeegon started cheerfully, then evidently realised he had no inoffensive way to end the sentence and fell silent.

“Our admiration of the aki’Drednanth must seem very silly to you,” Arbus So said with quiet composure.

“Little bit.”

“That will do, Mister Pendraegg,” Z-Lin said firmly. “Mortelion Arbus So is a guest here.”

“Um,” Maladin spoke up, diffident and nervous and clearly as aware as Sally had been of the defensive indignation suddenly circulating and bristling among the
Tramp
’s crew. “You’ve been travelling for some time now, with this fabricator problem you have, and basically no crew. You haven’t got … you know, aren’t there AstroCorps regulations about getting back to a base somewhere, for repair and debriefing and all that?”

“Modulars classically don’t have that sort of support structure,” Z-Lin replied, exquisitely aware of the sudden shift from simmering resentment to alert attentiveness among the bridge crew, “they go from place to place, joining up with larger ships, Chrysanthemums and so on. Where we re-link and resupply depends on our orders and our mission, and at the moment – up to the point we arrived at The Warm – those had led us away from bases. Not by necessity, just by chance. If The Warm had had facilities anymore, we would definitely have affected repairs. And if there had been an AstroCorps presence, we would have replenished our numbers.”

“So The Warm was the first place you’d flown to since suffering your damage, where you might have gotten patched up?” Maladin asked, apparently all innocent curiosity. Z-Lin reminded herself that the Bonshoon might be as agenda-driven and devious as the Molran, but he just didn’t seem that way. There was something honest and earnest about Thord’s friends. “Just by chance?”

Z-Lin thought of Twistlock. The fallen star and its howling mobs of stone-eyed cultists. Horatio Bunzo’s Funtime Happy World. She suppressed a shudder. “More or less,” she said.

“Was it these attacks?” Maladin asked eagerly, before Mortelion Arbus So could start to talk again. “Was it … are you on the trail of the Damorakind? Do you … is
that
your mission?”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss our mission,” Clue said, “except to say that no, Bayn Balro was the first sign we’d seen of these sorts of attacks, if the two cases even
were
related. We’re not exactly equipped to go hunting Damorakind right now, as you probably noticed. No, the actual issues getting in the way of repair and resupply, like I say, have been a series of wrong-place, wrong-time scenarios.”

“A staggering series,” Decay said lightly.

“But the Captain knows what he’s doing,” Zeegon, to Clue’s surprise, spoke up too.

“I never said he didn’t,” Maladin protested.

“Well, whatever the details of our orders and ongoing mission,” Clue went on firmly, “our mission right now is the galactic edge out past Declivitorion, and that includes a number of places we can stop and get repairs done, and maybe even a whole new crew. Places you guys and Thord and the seed can commandeer a better ship, for that matter.”

“Thord says it is more about the journey, the story, and the tellers of the story,” Maladin said. “She might choose to keep us on
Astro Tramp 400
with you.”

“That will be between her and the Captain,” Z-Lin said.

“How about you guys?” Zeegon asked, turning to look at Arbus So. “Sure you want to stop on Eshret? I hear there’s worms.”

“That was our agreement,” Arbus So said placidly. “This is neither a passenger cruiser nor a rescue craft, and our needs are simple. There is a very good chance that the Fergunak have already flown to the worlds you have on your flight path, and that help is on the way, through soft-space, even now.”

“Speaking of soft-space,” Clue said, “how are we looking, helm?”

Zeegon, to the Commander’s lasting gratitude, didn’t make a smart-arse remark about not knowing what button to press, nor did he hurl them unexpectedly into relative speed willy-nilly. “Ready for superluminal crossover, Commander,” he said crisply. “Power levels steady, engine panels green across the board, safe distance reached and we’re at maximum subluminal.”

“Right you are, Mister Pendraegg,” Z-Lin said. “Let’s go to Eshret.”

“Commander,” Zeegon acknowledged, and began to key in the commands. At that moment, the communicator display lit up on Z-Lin’s console and the painstakingly-enunciated voice of an eejit in the engine room broadcast aloud to the entire bridge. Z-Lin knew it was the engine room because she could hear Contro jabbering and laughing in the background.

“Is this medical bay?”

“No,” Clue replied steadily, all too aware of the collective multi-species gaze fixed on her, “this is bridge.”

“Oh.”

“What’s going on there?” she asked. Now she could hear jovial
oi
s and
honestly
s from the laughing Chief Engineer. “Has someone been hurt?”

“That’s why I medical bay.”

“What’s
happened
?”

“Hello!” the eejit’s voice was abruptly replaced by Contro’s, sounding a little slurred and funny but generally like his usual cheerfully hopeless self. “Nothing to worry about, carry on! Only I was juff checking the coolant conduits with Miffter Waffa, something about the new seals in the farm ring – honestly, where did we get seals from? I thought all the water in the Chaliff was froven! Ha ha ha! But I suppose you can have a farm with seals, why not indeed? Anyway Waffa wouldn’t effplain it to me after a while! Ha ha!”

“Our Chief Engineer is a nuclear transpersion physicist,” Z-Lin felt obliged to explain to solemnly-surprised-looking Arbus So, and did her best to ignore Zeegon’s widening grin in the process. “He’s a bit … eccentric.”