Bonshoon: A Tale of the Final Fall of Man (37 page)

The teeming populations of the orbital habitats, platforms, Mandelbrots and Chrysanthemums had all been comprehensively wiped out, the structures erased. There were a few emergency habs that had been flown in from nearby worlds, but all told there had been less than a thousand survivors. And they had all moved on. It went without saying that there were no spare pieces of equipment for an AstroCorps modular. Teams of researchers were still down on the planet surface trying to ascertain whether its raging volcanoes and choked atmosphere were even capable of being returned to a livable environment on a smaller scale than millions of years. Current theory was that the world was unsalvageable.

There were also a few teams of indomitable prospectors, looking to stake their claims on the new world as soon as the magma cooled and as soon as it was declared a lost cause. These eternal optimists had been the main source of headaches for the people manning the blockade.

The New Chal authorities had heard about Alr’Wady, but welcomed the updated information. Oddly – or perhaps not so oddly – the personnel
here
were more or less okay with the Fleet gutting an alleged assortment of worlds. When you’d seen total annihilation, the prospect of a bunch of Molren politely lifting your mining equipment and power apparatus off-world and flying away seemed pretty innocuous.

Not only that, but the Chalcedonians had seen the underlying narrative as well.

“The Molren don’t believe it,” Captain Bartholyn Dathory told Z-Lin, Sally, Decay, Waffa, Janya and Janus when they came aboard her flagship. “They never did.”

“Don’t believe…?” Z-Lin inquired.

Dathory waved a beefy hand. “The whole idea of staying mobile, spreading to all these worlds and making settlements while a core keeps on sleeping and flying,” she said. “It’s all about this lofty idea they have, protection in case of supernova or massive asteroidal collision, what have you. Protection from extinction. You know – with the Fleet hiding out there, a part of the species always survives,” she gave Decay a glance. “A part of all the Fleet species,” she amended, inclining her head curtly.

“A seed,” Janya murmured.

“Bah,” Dathory summarised. “When was the last big asteroidal extinction event? We derail those bastards. Have done for the past couple of thousand years.”

“There was that nasty business on Vurm, sixty-odd years ago,” Decay said.

“Vurm was a pooch-screw,” Dathory declared. “The asteroid that did the damage was masked by almost unique radiation and density signatures and hidden in the middle of the cluster, and they
got
the other eighteen rocks. Then it happened to sideswipe the planet at just the wrong intersection of oceans, tectonic plates and transpersion plants. There are still people who think the whole thing was a setup,” she waved a hand once again. “Beside the point. Doesn’t matter. The point
is
, the Molren don’t believe that cheesy old survivalist philosophy either, not really. They don’t really buy into this non-violent, run-and-fade bullplop. It’s a
façade
. They’re going to fight. Always were. And it’s been coming for a long time. Ever since their last big run-in with the Cancer, when they lost so many and the wacky-wacky-Drednanth pulled their bollocks out of the smelter, they’ve been getting ready for the next time. Getting ready to
finish
it. A-seed-survives won’t cut it this time, because these aren’t rogue asteroids. And run-and-fade won’t cut it, because these bastards run faster. When push comes to shove, the Molren will shove back,” she smacked fist into palm, and squeezed. “
Hard
.”

“Some might say ‘about time’,” Waffa suggested.

“Damn right,” Dathory approved. “A lot of Chalcedonians wonder why we haven’t done this before. The Cancer is only going to spread. Why not perform a pre-emptive strike?
Cut them out
once and for all?”

Because
, Decay replied inwardly,
every time we’ve tried anything of the sort, Damorakind haven’t even had the decency to hand our arses back to us
.

He’d never really understood the deep-seated human impulse to
die fighting now
rather than pass an issue on to some future generation that might actually solve said issue. He
tried
not to let prejudice answer this riddle for him, but sometimes his experience with humans got in the way of this noble sentiment. That was when he became incapable of seeing it as anything but raw, howling, teeth-bared monkeyhate. Confront a group of humans with a challenge that could be solved by immediate violence or by generation-spanning thought, and they would go for the violence every time, with a relish that Decay usually considered funny but he knew the Molren had found deeply disturbing from day one.

What did it say about the state of the Six Species if the
Fleet
was now taking this approach?

Decay could see the logic, certainly. If something was going to kill you whether you acted or not it was arguably the nobler thing, however animalistic, to go out with jaws gnashing. It just became a little jarring when death by inaction was so far removed, and the potential for future solutions was so seemingly boundless. Human generations were so much
shorter
than Molranoid ones, and humans barely seemed to care about the generations that were alive
right now
. You’d think procrastination was a no-brainer.

By the same token, put a challenge in front of those same humans that could be solved by no other means than immediate restraint and temperance, and the dear little fluffy-headed creatures would face their inevitable doom with the serene acceptance of a Bonshoon convinced of his ascension to the hallowed halls of Vahoonity. Because if it wasn’t a problem that you could visualise as an animal trying to bite your face off, and could therefore solve by biting the animal’s face off first, then it was a problem that simply did not have a solution.

Of course, he conceded, everybody’s conceptions of the length of time they had to deal with the Cancer may have turned out to be
mis
conceptions.

“We’ve been lucky not to have the Cancer follow our spies and covert ops teams back into heavily-populated space and cut
us
out,” Z-Lin responded, to Decay’s immense relief. “Sad to say, the Cancer outguns us under normal circumstances.”

“Seems like normal circumstances have just become a thing of the past,” the irrepressible Captain Dathory noted with grim satisfaction, putting Decay’s thoughts to words much like Clue had.

“You believe the rumours, then?” Z-Lin said. “About the Fleet going to war against these new aliens – total war? Stripping the Six Species down and turning us into weapons?”

“I don’t know what I believe,” Dathory said. “I’m just a low-level Daughter of Chal, sitting at her console above a world of eleven billion ghosts. But this feels bigger than the Adderbacks, worse than any little incident with dumblers or Fleet Separatists or the Karlists or corsair companies. And if any of us are thinking that it’s anything but Damorakind,” she said with a huff of grim amusement, “I’ll snort my epaulettes.”

“A new assault,” Sally said. “Some new weapon or type of ship, some new
government
, over in the Core. That’s what the general thought is. It’s the simplest solution. It’s
possible
that a dumbler species has evolved and developed this level of technology and advanced weaponry, without anyone finding them before, and this is their way of stepping out into the galaxy and making it theirs…”

“Sure, it’s a big galaxy,” Dathory said, “and the Six Species only lives in this quarter of it. But the general eyewitness reports seem to agree that these were Damorakind ships.”

“Let’s be fair, Captain,” Decay cautioned. “There haven’t actually
been
any eyewitnesses. The only people to survive, in every case, have been those well below the planet surface or otherwise separated from high observational tech. They didn’t see anything, or they’d be dead. Those who saw any part of the attack give contradictory and vague reports, and the fact that a lot of these coincide with Damorakind appearances can be put down to cultural phobia as much as anything else.”

“Granted,” Dathory said with another curt nod, “it’s indicative only. But whatever we’re dealing with, it’s big and powerful and it’s bent on destruction, and it seems about as merciful and interested in talking as the Cancer ever was, so let’s not call a spade a shovel. The fact is that now, it’s finally, fully,
totally
them or us, and the Fleet says ‘them’, and it’s about damn time.”

“Big Gravity upped stumps and took off with everything not nailed down in MundCorp Research Base,” Waffa said. “Packed it all into some new Worldship and lit out for parts unknown.”

“I saw something in your upload about that,” the Chalcedonian Captain nodded. “And it took on a bunch of corsair squatters?”

“They didn’t seem to be any better informed than we were,” Z-Lin said. “And the Fleet aren’t the only busy ones. The Karlists had been active at Seven Widdershins, too. They wiped out a big group of AstroCorps crewmembers, modulars and material.”

“I saw that in your upload, as well,” Dathory said, her blocky face grim. “Bunch of pricks.”

“Right, but all that stuff was already
clearly
part of some sort of mobilisation and retooling,” the Commander said, “and it had been delivered by
Separatists
. So AstroCorps and the Fleet and the Separatists are at work here, and they’re keeping it all under wraps.”

“And the Corps shipped out of Seven Widdershins like their butts were on fire and their pubes were catching,” Waffa added succinctly.

“Well, right,” Z-Lin said again. “Possibly on the advice or instructions of the Worldship Captains. But who knows? The details were even hidden from the synth.”

“That
was
where we first started getting rumours of comms concerning a coordinated counter-strike against known attacks, though,” Decay added. “It was just kept very quiet.”

“Maddeningly quiet,” Z-Lin agreed. “And then there were those two
Fleet
Worldships we tried talking to at Standing Wave…” she scowled at the memory. Decay, too, remembered that she had been goaded to referring to the representatives as ‘cold-blooded highfalutin’ noseless bastards’.

“This has been going on longer than we ever thought, and is more widespread,” he noted in agreement.

“And if the Karlists are involved, it’s
all
connected,” Dathory announced.

“Well, let’s not go nuts with the it’s-all-connected,” Z-Lin advised, and Sally nodded. “And let’s not even get into the possibility that the big attacks seem to target technology, and so the Karlists may have actually done Seven Widdershins a
favour
by taking out their AstroCorps infrastructure. The fact is, if there’s some sort of big Fleet action and any suggestion that Damorakind are involved, the Karlists will get rowdy. We know this. In this case, though, the Seven Widdershins placements and movements were
probably
part of something bigger, something that the Separatists were on the same page with and something the Fleet Captains weren’t talking about. Maybe even this general mobilisation and gearing up for war. Could be the Karlists just happened to attack the modulars because that’s what they do.”

“In which case, they bit off more than they could chew,” Dathory said with dark glee.

“It might signal a general declaration of hostilities against Damorakind and all their followers,” Sally said, “and the Fleet’s preparing for that.”

“Oh no,” Waffa said disingenuously, “those poor psychotic nutbars will all be wiped out,” Captain Dathory barked a laugh.

“It’s a pretty extreme position for the Fleet to take,” Decay pointed out in an attempt to stem the incipient outpouring of humanity at its most human. “Destroying whole cultures is a noisy job. Normally they’re all about living and letting live. If the Karlists think they can be friends with the Cancer, they can feel free as long as they’re only hurting themselves. And if the Adderbacks or the Boze want to shout and bring Damorakind down on themselves, let them do it without us being collateral damage. But if it comes to a big fight, I guess they’re not going to keep on sneaking around. They’ll fight back with everything, like cornered animals. If Damorakind can hit us anywhere in the galaxy, throughout Six Species space and
we can’t get out
…”

“Right,” Dathory said. “There have been fights in the past. But has the Fleet ever lifted whole planetary settlements up into their Worldships and flown away before?”

“There’s another possibility,” Janya spoke up. Everyone looked at her. “The infrastructure they’re taking could be part of a long-term survival and powering mechanism,” she looked around. None of the humans seemed to get what she was driving at.

“Fleet containment,” Decay said, “in perpetuity. An attempt to seal up their Worldships and vanish. Maybe even to cross the intergalactic gulf, either at battery-powered relative speed or at high subluminal registers.”

“Not sure which is crazier,” Sally said after a long pause. “A trans-galactic flight at subluminal, or a battery-powered relative flight.”

“We sent Rakmanmorion on a battery-powered relative flight,” Janus remarked.

“A month-and-a-half-long flight,” Sally said, “of a single-pilot craft, and it took a battery the size of-”

“I’m just saying it’s a possibility,” Janya said coolly. “Worldships are demonstrably large enough to contain huge facilities, if they pare down and forget about transpersion because it doesn’t work out there.”

“A depressing possibility,” Dathory grunted.

“The impact of a possibility on the mood of the person hearing about it doesn’t actually affect its probability,” Janya replied.

“Alright,” Z-Lin said, clearly stifling a smile, “there doesn’t seem to be much more to add here. We all have our missions, and no doubt we’ll find out what the Fleet is up to when they want us to,” she rose, and Captain Dathory did the same, although she was still peering at Janya as if trying to figure out whether or not she’d just been insulted. “Our next leg takes us across Chalcedony space to the far border,” she said, shaking the Captain’s hand, “to Fat Tuesday. No stops, naturally. We were hoping to deal with permissions and course-adjustments at New Chalcedon.”