Drysine Legacy (The Spiral Wars Book 2) (50 page)

“A curious state of existence,”
said Styx.
“To only know intimately that to which you have been personally introduced. Can I take it we are now acquainted?”

As though she were teasing him, Jokono thought. From Styx, it was neither comforting nor amusing. She had his details on file, of course, and knew his face on sight. AIs, she was suggesting, did not place greater value on data just because it was standing directly before them. Data from memories many thousands of years old could seem just as strong, to a mind in which everything was digitally encoded.

“Yes of course,” Jokono agreed, with all the cool he’d ever used while interviewing crazy people accused of crimes. “It’s very nice to meet you finally.”

“Of course,”
said Styx.

“Careful,” Rooke told Jokono with an amused look. “She’s getting snippy. Comes from listening to Lisbeth too long.”

Romki ignored them all, frowning as he considered the various components hovering in the display around him. “Now what if,” he suggested as something new occurred to him, “we realign this module with the X-matrix along here…” and he shifted the new parts into line, launching into his and Rooke’s foreign language once more.

“As it happens,” Jokono continued, “as the ship’s intelligence officer, I have been asked by the Captain to gather more information from you on various things. If you can spare a moment?”

“Of course I can,”
said Styx.
“Supervising these two is not taxing.”

“Hey,” Rooke protested. “I heard that.”

Jokono nodded. “Firstly, the drysine ships that are now preparing to leave. I take it you will not tell us where they are going?”

“No. Their destination must remain hidden. They are now the last of their kind, as am I. I cannot accompany them for now, and so they must go alone.”

Once upon a time,
Phoenix
had placed the highest priority upon destroying old hacksaw nests. Now they’d likely just created a huge new one, with FTL ships and more than a thousand drones. It made no one happy… except perhaps Lieutenant Rooke and Stan Romki, whom everyone agreed were enjoying their new ship-guest far too much.

“Very well,” said Jokono. “Now the parren. I’d like to ask you some questions about where we’re going, and who you think we might be able to meet.”

“Ensign Jokono,”
said Styx.
“Please understand that my data on the parren is now twenty five thousand years out of date. You’d do better consulting Mr Romki, his data is at least current, if incomplete.”

“Well no,” Jokono insisted. “Actually I’d like to ask you of your old data. If we are to track the current whereabouts of this data-core, we first need to understand where it has been. My background is in criminal investigations, where we attempt to establish a timeline of events based on whatever snippets of information we can uncover. And so I’d like to begin by asking you of your memories of the parren, during your time.” He turned on his recorder, and sat on the edge of the bench. “Come to that, what
was
your time? Or put more simply, who
are
you?
What
are you?”

Silence from the queen. Rooke and Romki both stopped what they were doing to look at her, fascinated. Typical that they hadn’t had the nerve to ask her already, Jokono thought drily. Both were so clearly in awe of her, it made them a potential liability in her presence. He made a mental note to report that to Captain Debogande, with the rest.

“Any identifiers that I could communicate to you would be in drysine coded language, or the language of our enemies,”
Styx said finally.
“It would mean nothing to you.”

“And that,” said Jokono, “is exactly the kind of unhelpful answer that I’ve been instructed to no longer accept from you. So please, take your time.”

“But the parren,”
Styx continued as though she hadn’t heard him.
“The Tahrae faction, as you’ve called them. They called themselves ‘tukayran maskai’ — I believe it could translate as ‘the chosen’, in your English. Them I knew well.”

“Twenty five thousand years ago? For how long?”

“Our people evolve, Ensign. In body and mind, I was not the entity I am now even a hundred years before that time. Identity shifts. You ask me to identify a singular sense of self, yet it is not something my people typically possess.”

“But the parren knew you as a single entity?” Jokono pressed. “You may not believe in such things, but they’re organics, and most organics do. How did they know you? What did they call you?”

“They called me Halgolam,”
said Styx.

Jokono frowned, and was about to ask more when he saw Romki’s expression. His eyes were wide. “Stanislav? You recognise the name?”

“Halgolam is one of the oldest parren gods,” said Romki. “Long dead, like our Greek and Roman gods. Zeus, Venus, Mars. Styx. I don’t think any parren have worshiped Halgolam in… oh, ten thousand years. At least.”

“And what was she?” Jokono pressed, feeling cold dread prickling up his spine. Some old things in the galaxy, he was quite certain should stay dead and buried forever. “What kind of god was this Halgolam?”

“The literal translation in the old tongue was ‘the wings of the night’,” said Romki. “Halgolam was the goddess of violent retribution, sent by the creator to wreak terrible justice upon the wicked.” He took a deep breath. “We might call her the Angel of Death.”

A
BOUT THE AUTHOR

J
oel Shepherd is
the Australian author of twelve SF and Fantasy novels, including ‘The Cassandra Kresnov Series’ and ‘A Trial of Blood and Steel’, and ‘Renegade: The Spiral Wars’

For more information:

• @ShepJoel
  
• joelshepherdauthor