Drednanth: A Tale of the Final Fall of Man (47 page)

“Less likely to speak to a Molranoid,” Dunnkirk had said.

“More likely to speak to one he sees as a doorway to the Dreamscape,” Thord had countered with a smile.

They’d sat for a while, the sunlight playing over the water, the wind teasing the leaves. Dunnkirk had looked up at the Drednanth scatter.

“What do they think?” he’d asked.

“We’ll see,” she’d said comfortably.

Maladin had shifted on the grass, run his fingers through it, dug them into the soil. “How long until … ?”

Thord had smiled. “The seed flies,” she’d said. “I returned some minutes ago,” her smile widened into a grin. “You didn’t even notice.”

When Dunnkirk returned to the flesh, he was alone in the corridor with Zeegon Pendraegg.

“C’mon, buddy,” the human said, climbing to his feet and extending a hand. “Let’s go to the bridge, and –
oof
,” Zeegon laughed as Dunnkirk took his hand in two of his own and the human tried to help him to his feet. Dunnkirk took pity on him after a moment, and pushed himself up with legs and lower arms. “Right, big heavy jerk. How are you doing?”

“I am okay and fine,” Dunnkirk said gamely. “And Maladin and Thord, they are fine.”

Zeegon’s eyes widened. “No kidding?”

“Sorry?”

“I mean, really? You were…” he wiggled his fingers. “You were in contact?” Dunnkirk nodded. “And Thord’s … ?” Dunnkirk grinned, and nodded again. “That’s so cool. To think, there are still people out there who doubt the whole Drednanth reincarnation deal. Haven’t people done this sort of thing before? With non-aki’Drednanth watching?”

“It is rare,” Dunnkirk said. “And you have just my
aña
, my say, my
word
, yes, that it is so. This is for you enough. But not maybe for the ones who do not believe.”

“Ah well, who needs ‘em?” Zeegon clapped Dunnkirk’s back. “Let’s go.”

They returned to the bridge.

“Dunnkirk,” Z-Lin broke the unhappy silence, “we’re glad you’re still with us.”

“Thanks have, Commander,” Dunnkirk said. “I also am glad.”

“So,” Zeegon sat at the helm, gave Boonie a brief scratch between the mossy ears, and put his hands on the controls, “where to? Do we continue out, or go back in?”

“You’re funny, Mister Pendraegg,” Z-Lin said. “Just turn us one-eighty degrees and hit the subluminals, preferably without further sassmouth.”

“‘Sassmouth’,” Zeegon said savouringly, “that’s a good one.”

They accelerated smoothly back to maximum subluminal cruising velocity. Dunnkirk was tempted to go back to the forest and say his farewells to the others before they went back into the grey, but opted not to. He wasn’t sure where they were headed next anyway, and how long they were going to be at relative speed. He wouldn’t have known what to tell them.

Instead, he wandered down to the medical bay. The
Tramp
made the transition to relative speed while he was walking the corridor alone, and he indulged in a little mournful sigh.

“Doctor Glomulus?” he called, stepping into the bright, sterile chamber. It was past the usual shift hours, but it had been an unusual day. Everyone else was still awake, so Dunnkirk had assumed Glomulus would be, even though he had not been involved in the events. He’d noticed that the medic kept unusual, unpredictable hours in any case. Dunnkirk had never really figured out the humans and their periods of unconsciousness. But if you visited Glomulus he, like Janya – and like Z-Lin – was more likely to be sitting awake than fuzzy with sleep. “Doctor Glomulus?”

Dunnkirk stepped around the heavy medical fabricator, and the linked-up piece of isolation pod equipment hit him in the side of the neck. Before it had been locked down, the device had been part of the isolation pod from Bayn Balro, specifically designed for use on Bonshooni. It had gone to work on an eejit, with fatal results.

Now, it was reduced to its bare bones, but combined crudely with the sedative panel that had proven so effective against Molranoids, enhanced still further with distilled abbronax, and a series of large sample sacs. It latched onto Dunnkirk’s flesh and paralysed him systematically. Before he could shout, before he could grab at the smooth board that had just been hammered against his throat, before he could flail the way the Blaran corsair Scross had done, he was down.

The sedative also prevented the firewalls from closing in his veins and arteries, and kept his blood flowing strong and steady. The sacs filled, one after another, and his assailant deftly swapped them out for fresh ones.

As darkness fell, Dunnkirk drifted. He tried to go to Thord’s forest, but of course Thord was gone. He tried to reach the seven, the rebellion, the bright stars he had never been able to think of as anything but Thord’s children. He scrabbled for them, tried to envision them, tried to find the stars and step towards them.

He failed. And so he drifted in emptiness, bodiless, voiceless.

After about eleven minutes, the flow trailed off. The sacs stopped filling. And Dunnkirk was dead.

ÇROM

Ol’ Drabby washed dolefully across the viewscreens.

The Captain sat back, sighed, turned off the monitors and, with another couple of disgusted taps, closed the main screens to replace them with … well, nothing, for now. Cool darkness reigned in the spacious chamber for a short time, before a low green light indicated a new communication.

Still, the Captain sat for a while and let the light cast gloomy shadows across the console. Then he stood, crossed to his drinks cabinet on autopilot, and returned to the table with bottle and glass. He sighed and tapped the light.

“So,” Bruce said as Çrom Skelliglyph poured himself a generous dose of 001100101 half-malt, sipped, grimaced, sipped again. “The Hacticos finally, officially join you among the heady ranks of planet killers.”

“First of all, I keep telling you, I didn’t destroy Earth,” Çrom said, jabbing a finger randomly towards a nearby monitor, “
you’re
a drama queen. And second of all, one day you’re going to have to tell me how you learned that name.”

“It’s just a convenient shorthand,” Bruce said, “it’s an old Xidh word synonymous with
chaos
and
havoc
. What happened to your classical education?”

Skell gave a brief laugh. “When I got my classical education,” he said, “it was just called ‘an education’,” he sighed again, kicked back from the console, and clapped his hands. A selection of corner ceiling lights welled up, giving his quarters a homely glow.

“So tacky,” Bruce said.

“Heathen,” Skell said, and slid back towards the console. He leaned down and, with a grunt, lifted an armload of dusty grey-black data cubes onto his lap. One by one, he thumped them onto the desk. “The data from Bayn Balro,” Skell put a hand on one data block, then on a second. “The data from The Warm,” he lifted his hand and lowered it onto the third block. “
Boonie’s Last Stand
,” he said, and then patted the fourth. “Declivitorion.”

“All of that would fit on one data block, you know,” Bruce said. “And still leave room for the entirety of modern Aquilaran literature on either side.”

“I thought we’d established I’m old-fashioned like that.”

“Where did you even get the Declivitorion block from? Was that what you made me pull off that gunship while everyone was flapping around and putting dead ables in the recycling tubes?”

“They’re calling them eejits these days, not ables. The ables are the properly-configured ones.”

“I still can’t tell the difference,” Bruce admitted. “It just seems more polite to call them all ables, instead of all ejits.”

“You are, at heart, a polite synth,” Çrom raised his glass in salute. “Anyway, as you say, there was plenty of time to swing Mister Goggles’s ship over with the catchers, and upload its database,” he chuckled, sipped his drink, set the glass back down. “Mister Goggles,” he shook his head. “That was pretty good, wasn’t it?”

“Brilliant,” Bruce said dryly. “Did you teach her that one?”

“Not me. Clue’s got the making of a fine XO. But the info was easy enough to pick up at Declivitorion, not that the sharks knew much. They came too late. But they had a fresher perspective, more time, and
way
more ships. I’m just curious as to why
you
didn’t already know I’d grabbed the data.”

“I was a little distracted at the time,” Bruce said snippily, “walking off that dirty cage trick they pulled. Thanks, by the way, for risking another contamination event. Do you have any idea the twisted stuff the Fergunak do with their data?”

“You’re fine.”

“I’m going to have to take your word for that, seeing as how a lot of my systems are still
stonk
ed beyond recognition. Do those data blocks tell you anything?”

“Lots,” Skell smiled. “Even without the entirety of modern Aquilaran literature thrown in.”

“Overrated, the entirety of modern Aquilaran literature,” Bruce conceded. “And our next steps? I can’t help but notice our inbound heading is slightly out of whack with our outbound one.”

“This path takes us along the Chalcedony border,” Skell said, “even if the outer mining belt is ultimately no saner than the barmy arm, there’s bigger tech and a better chance of us running into Corps or Fleet agents.”

“I thought that was something you’d been trying to avoid.”

“Okay, a better chance of us running into the right
type
of Corps or Fleet agents.”

“And the cargo you get on an inbound trajectory through Chalcedony gives you more bang for your hold-space,” Bruce added.

“There is that,” Çrom admitted, and tapped three of the data blocks again, in sequence.
Bayn Balro
,
The Warm
,
Declivitorion
. “Plus, it’s well out of any likely trajectory path, depending on where the Hacticos went after hitting the edge.”

“Have you considered the possibility that they are drawing an enormous pentagram of demolished settlements across the galaxy?”

The Captain picked up his glass again. “Yes.”

“Oh,” Bruce faltered, then rallied. “So, what about the next steps, mid-to-long term?”

“Let’s not get overconfident,” Skell said. “As for what comes after Chalcedony … I don’t suppose you’d believe me if I said it came to me in a dream?”

“With a litter of aki’Drednanth on board? I might be imposed upon to believe it.”

Çrom smiled again, finished his drink, and tapped in a sequence of coordinates on the Captain-internal comm circuit in the same movement.

“They’ll mutiny,” Bruce said after a moment.

“They didn’t mutiny the first time we went there.”

“That’s because it was
the first time we went there
.”

“Clue’ll get them into line.”

“You’re putting a lot of faith in her.”

“I have no faith,” Çrom Skelliglyph said seriously. “I trust the numbers.”

“Oh well. I guess it’s good, in a way,” Bruce eventually concluded. “If you can sell them on Bunzo’s, you can sell them on anything.”

Skell squinted, leaned forward, deleted the coordinates and picked up the bottle. Normally he tried to stick to the crew regulations – not even the Captain was above the law – but under the circumstances, it seemed a trivial straw to slip onto the proverbial camel’s back. “Anything like what?” he asked, pouring himself a fresh glass.

“Like the bonefields.”

“Have you been licking the magboots again?” Skell laughed nervously. “I wouldn’t even sell
me
on the bonefields. We’re
not
going there again.”

“Technically true,” Bruce conceded. “You know it’s said you can only ever go there once.”

“Right,” Çrom said.

“Right.”

“So, not going there again.”

“Not
again
,” Bruce said, “no. I get the feeling you’re missing the point here.”

“If the point is my pert, supple backside anywhere near the bonefields, I’m probably missing it on purpose.”

“Okay, we’ll come back to that,” Bruce said soothingly.

“Will we, by gum.”

Çrom clapped his hands again, sinking his quarters back into near-total darkness. He picked up his glass, swirled it for a moment, then sipped. Grimaced. Sipped again. Studied his hands.

It was amazing, he reflected, how much blood came out of a Bonshoon.

THE END

AUTHOR’S NOTE

There’s really nothing worse – well, there are plenty of things
worse
, even in the narrower category of ‘reading a book’, but still, this is pretty bad – than thinking you have a goodly wad of pages still to read in a story, only to find that the story ends three pages later and the final twenty-five pages of the book is a long-winded bullplop-off by the author where he or she thanks a whole bunch of people that you are instantly hideously envious that you don’t have the good fortune of knowing. People without whom the book never would have been written, people who helped at every stage of the creation and editing and publication and marketing processes, people to whom the author owes everything and whose names you are then forced to read, in bitter despair, knowing that you will never be blessed with their presence in your life.

You will never be as lucky as that author, that
bastard
who not only just robbed you of twenty-five pages of book you were sort of hoping to read, but then blithely robbed you of any hope, any reason for being, any happiness in your own shallow excuse for an existence, any satisfaction you might have had in your own sadly inferior circle of friends and acquaintances.