by John Ringo
"You are welcome, young kessentai."
As Frederico walked away with the wire spool in his father's pouch, he heard, over the speaker system, "All hands and passenger, all hands and passenger. Stand by for emergence from hyperspace."
Guano, also in attendance on the bridge, stole a glance at his hand and waved it, fingers outstretched, from side to side several times. Half satisfied, he asked aloud, "Do the rest of you see what I think I'm seeing?"
"If what you think you see is a gas giant, an anti-matter gas giant, in the middle of nowhere, being eaten by a black hole," Dwyer said, "then, yes, we see what you see."
"Good," Guano said, breathing a sigh of relief. "For a minute there I thought I was having a VX flashback."
Dwyer raised an eyebrow. "I though Boyd was kidding when he said . . ." He let the words trail off.
Guano shook his head. "No, Father. When I was in despair I did a lot of really strange things. But for the Grace of our Lord, I don't know what would have become of me."
"Or any of us, Guano," Dwyer answered, "or any of us. What now, Sally?"
"Now, given that the fuel is there to be harvested, I think we refuel. I've got big bunkers but they're not infinite."
Many jumps later, around an entirely different system, al Rashid looked deeply disappointed. Dwyer's command, however, "No, we're not going down there," was absolute. It looked like such a fascinating world, too; a moon of a gas giant, never knowing night. Yet the radiation was simply too high, much more than the pinnace, the Salem, or any suit they had could protect against.
"Do we know they were there? The Posleen, I mean?" al Rashid asked.
"Yes," Sally answered. "There are traces of them all over, from cities to tunnels to the wrecks of ships. Must have been a hell of a war, to ruin the place as thoroughly as they did," she added, perhaps a bit wistfully.
Al Rashid nodded. "A shame we can't explore it. When will the radiation allow people . . . beings, anyway, to land?"
"Basically the whole place is radioactive. If we had some Armored Combat Suits they could land and explore," Dwyer said, "for a while, anyway. So perhaps it will not remain a dark hole in our knowledge forever, or even for very long, Imam. By the way, Sally, do you have any idea of what has caused the radiation to remain so bad so long?"
"Maybe. Background radiation is naturally high on that moon anyway. But I think—I can't be sure, but I think—that one or more ships trying to enter hyperspace from too close actually impacted on the planet instead of making a complete jump. There are spots down there that just exude death. And then there are enough glazed spots . . ." She let the thought drift.
"Grisly," Dwyer commented. "Are we sure," he asked, "that the band we are following came here?"
"Absolutely, and within the last dozen years or so," Sally answered. "I don't know how long they stuck around, though. I think . . . not . . . very."
"Can you still follow?"
"I'm calculating the next jump now. With only three more likely targets, it's easier, you know."
The work was easy, cutting gold wire into sections about two feet long. It was especially easy for Guano, since he cut precisely one piece, then put Querida to work slicing off the others while he continued with his "hobby."
In this case, continuing with his hobby involved studying diagrams of the ship, and especially of the forward section. Must have everything just right, he thought.
The emergence into the next system was perfect. For that matter, the system itself was perfect. Here there had never been an orna'adar, so far as Sally's sensors could tell. Here the Posleen cities, while abandoned and partially covered, were otherwise pristine.
Moreover, the planet was lush, with wide seas, broad rivers, long, uninterrupted stretched of woodland, and abundant wildlife, both on land and in the water. Vast stretches seemed still to be made up mostly of a grain that could thrive even without cultivation. There was no disease, no radiation, no poison in the air or the water.
"Posleen paradise," was Sally's summation, to the key personnel assembled in the conference room.
"Why Posleen?" Aelool asked. The Indowy was trusted enough not to wear chains any longer. He still had two grim looking Switzers, Beck and Lorgus, standing behind him with their halberds adjusted to "Ginsu."
"Pyramids," Sally answered. She'd sent an unmanned probe down to do a flyover and collect some samples. "Abat and grat down below. It was their planet, once."
""Our homeworld?" Guano asked, through his AS. "Our original homeworld, I mean."
Sally strained to be polite. "No," she shook her head. "Body chemistry is all wrong. There's no way your people evolved here."
Guano just nodded understanding.
"Do we land?" Dwyer asked. "Opinions?"
"I'd like to," said al Rashid. "If we can."
"Did you see any predators?" asked von Altishofen of Sally.
"No," she answered, "none of any size and grat and abat won't bother us if we don't bother them."
"I say land, then," said the Wachtmeister.
"Nurse Duvall?" As usual, when they were in the same room, she stood right next to the Wachtmeister.
"No diseases? Why not?" she answered.
"Reverend Guanamarioch," Dwyer asked, "would you like to go down and explore, maybe bring Frederico and Querida with you?"
"Please, Captain. I think Querida, in particular, would like to get off the ship." Guano looked at Sally, "No offense, of course."
"None taken."
The ship set down in the middle of a lake surrounded by low fields of what appeared to be the same kind of grain crop that dominated much of the planet. Sally, sitting up in the bridge did a quick scan of their surroundings and, finding nothing untoward, pressed the button to open a portal and extend an amphibious gangway. For a fact, she didn't need to be on the bridge at all and could have let that part of her which was the AID take care of the whole thing. And, truthfully, part of the ship or not, the human part of her wanted to get out and about.
Querida raised her muzzle and trilled with pleasure as the portal opened and the smell of the planet entered the vestibule. Earth was okay, she'd never known anything else, but this place just smelled right.
That was nothing, though, compared to her reaction at seeing the place. Earth's greens and blues and browns were, again, okay, but the glorious golds and reds and yellows of this world were . . .
"Home," Guano said to no one in particular. "This place looks and feels and smells like we belong here."
Querida began to run back and forth, twisting and turning and pawing the ground. She acted like nothing so much as an energetic puppy.
The cosslain had beaten the Swiss Guards out of the ship, something that von Altishofen intended to have a few choice words with his crew over, sometime real soon. Still, the boys weren't far behind and soon had a secure half perimeter set up around the spot where gangway met lake shore. Unfortunately, with only the eleven of them, plus von Altishofen (for two guards remained aboard, posted right at the portal, to ensure no abat or grat boarded), it was not one that contained enough space for Querida to gambol about.
She reached the edge of the ad hoc security perimeter, then stopped. Twisting her head to look directly at Guanamarioch, she whistled a question.
"Go on, dear,' he said. "But take Frederico with you. He's big enough to guard you, now, rather than you guarding him."
Querida grunted her thanks, then went to collect her son. On the way, she met Sally, the woman, just emerging from the pinnace. The cosslain stopped and cupped her hands, making the sign for Sally to climb aboard.
"Why not?" Dwyer answered Sally's visual question. "The boy and his mother can keep you safe enough, even if there is something dangerous here."
With Querida's help, Sally climbed aboard her broad back. Frederico, in full armor with halberd soon joined his mother and the woman. Then the three of them trotted off, bits of grain and chaff kicking up behind them.
About half way across the field
Querida came to a gentle stop. She looked down at the grain quizzically. The cosslain knew instinctively that she could eat just about anything. And the grain looked so inviting. She reached down and pulled up a fistful, then nibbled at that and . . .
Sally barely hung on as Querida jumped nearly straight up, her muzzle swinging from side to side as she sang out in unadulterated pleasure. When she came down again, she stuck her muzzle into the grain and began to simply reap.
Frederico bent his head to try it, too. He didn't leap up, but he did say, "Wow . . . this is better than nestling. This is better than . . . well, I don't know. It's better than anything I've ever tried, to include Dad's formaldehyde."
Sally shot an accusing glance at the Posleen boy. "Ah, to hell with it," she said. "Every boy tries men's vices as soon as he's able. Gather some up, Freddie. I want to analyze it back aboard . . . ummm . . . me."
"It's the platonic ideal of a Posleen diet," Sally said, a few days later. "We can't eat it—deadly poison to us, as a matter of fact—but they'll thrive on it."
"It's a lot better than the mush of the food dispensers," Guano agreed, speaking around a tuft of the grass through his AS. "And, again no offense, Lieutenant Kreuzer-Dwyer, even better than what you serve aboard ship. It is . . . amazingly good."
"Hmmm," mused Dwyer, "I wonder if we couldn't store a few tons."
"I can find space," Sally agreed. "As for harvesting it, though . . ."
"My wife and son and I could do that," Guano said.
"We'll give you a hand, Reverend," von Altishofen offered.
"One warning," Guano added. "You've got to be careful not to let abat into the ship. If the abat come the grat will follow and, while they're not that dangerous, normally, in the confines of a ship, to you humans, they could be deadly. We tried to keep them down but we always had abat and grat aboard."
"Do the abat and grat need to breathe?" Sally asked.
"Yes."
"Then no problem. I'll run the pinnace by remote and open it to space for a while before we dock. The harvesters can come up in a second lift. They'll have to make sure no abat follow, though."
"Works for me," Guano said.
"By the way," Dwyer asked. "You're the Posleen. What would you like to call that planet?"
"I was thinking," Guano said, and perhaps a bit sadly, "of calling it 'Posleden'."
Chapter Twenty-five
Home came the wanderers, leaving paradise behind,
For what good is paradise to beings not angels?
—The Tuloriad, Na'agastenalooren
Anno Domini 2012—Anno Domini 2013
Ship Arganaza'al
"There's nothing I can tell you," the Rememberer said, "That you cannot tell with your own senses. That world down below was made—or, at least, remade—for us. Literally re-made for us, I think."
"But should we stay here?" Tulo asked. "That's the important question."
Finba, who spent rather more time with the Rememberer now than he did with the tinkerer, answered, "We should not, Lord."
"Your reasons?" Tulo asked. He asked with more respect than was his wont since, despite Finba's little peccadillo in leaving his AS behind, the new member of the clan had brought back much useful information from the planet Nura, the world of exile.
"In the first place, Lord," Finba'anaga answered, "this world belongs to the demons, the Aldenata." After his long conversations with Hope Bringer, Finba had knocked the Aldenata right out of the stele of godhood and mentally consigned them to the Pit. "They own it and they cast us out from it. We might invite their attention again, were we to resettle it. And this time we might find no Rongasintas to guide us in escaping from yet another world of exile."
"Fair. What else?"
"Secondly," Finba continued, "this world is too good. Here we would grow fat and lazy and weak."
"Also fair. What else?"
"Third and lastly, Lord, it is not our world. I understood that you wished to find the world of our birth. If we stop here, we may never start looking again."
Tulo'stenaloor looked at his Rememberer.
"As the young one says, I agree."
"Let us be on our way then," Tulo concurred. "But let us cease our aimless wandering. Though there are two more worlds on the list the Indowy 'gave' us, let us go to the world of our birth. Finba'anaga, you said you know where that is?"
"I did and I do, Lord, and it is also in an out of the way system where the demons are unlikely to come looking for us."
"You seem pensive, Tulo," Goloswin observed, down in the senior mess deck of the Arganaza'al.
The clan lord said nothing, but nodded his head slowly.
"What's the problem?"
"Too many to list, Golo. Some of them go back to Aradeen, the homeworld of the humans, Earth; that, and the war there."
"You're not still hanging your head in shame over losing, are you?" Golo objected. "You did better than anyone else could have. Whatever our numbers, Tulo, we were still fighting out of our weight."
"I made mistakes," Tulo insisted. "The odd thing is, the more I think about it, the less I regret those mistakes. Plenty enough other things to regret anyway.
"Think about it, Tinkerer. Suppose I had defeated the humans. We'd have been able to stay on their planet for what? Maybe twenty orbits about its sun before we plunged ourselves into orna'adar again. And who's to say, tough as those bipedal bastards were, that they were the toughest we'd ever have encountered? Perhaps they did us a favor.
"And then, too, Golo, we were on a dead end. No, I don't just mean we were making no progress, though we weren't. We were literally on a dead end, heading outward on an arm of the great spiral that eventually ended. What would we have done once we reached that end, with nothing but ruined worlds behind us and no worlds ahead of us?"
"The galaxy's—"
"A big place?" Tulo interrupted. "Indeed it is. But at the rate we were destroying useable planets, and the rate at which that rate was growing, we'd eventually have run out."
"Maybe. Did we have a choice?"
"I don't know, Golo. Did we look for one? Is there a possibility that we found a species that could have saved us, somewhere along our journey, and ate them instead? Or made them hate us, as the humans hate us? As they have every reason to hate us?"
Goloswin answered, "We had the right to prefer our survival over the survival of others, Tulo."
Tulo shrugged. "That may be true, but it is not the whole truth. We had the right to prefer our species not become extinct. This does not mean we had the right to make others extinct . . . as we did in too many places to count."
Both kessentai went silent then, Tulo'stenaloor because, in his current mood he didn't want to talk about murder on a galactic scale, Goloswin because . . . Well, I just don't have an answer for the question Tulo is asking . . . or for the ones he doesn't want to ask.
"I'm losing my assistant," Goloswin said eventually, changing the subject. At Tulo's quizzical look he continued, "Finba'anaga wishes to give up the Way of Technology and take up the Way of Remembrance."
"You've agreed to this?" Tulo asked. "The Rememberer agrees?"
"Yes to both. I can always find a new assistant. Our Rememberer is getting old and already feels the call of the ancestors."
"Well," the clan lord said, "we owe the puppy for the word he brought back from the ship on Nura, the world of exile, the ship Hope Bringer. Let him become an acolyte Rememberer, then. It can't do any harm."
"As you say." Goloswin hesitated before asking the questions that had been on his mind since Tulo had announced they were heading to the world of the birth of their species. Finally, he did ask, "Tulo, what are we going to do when we get there? How will we survive? What will we do when our population grows out of bounds again?"
Tulo'stenaloor answered, with a weary, cynical smile, "Tinkerer, old friend, I haven't the first idea. Your ex-assistant has given me too much to think about."
A small group of kessentai, sometimes number
ing ten, sometimes three or four times that, had gathered about Finba'anaga. The numbers fluctuated as some did, and others did not, hark to his message. Some, like Borasmena, were almost always present.
That message was simple and not entirely morals based. Really, except for the implicit acceptance of ancestor worship, which—so Hope Bringer had said—had been all that remained of the spiritual in Posleen civilization once they had thrown off the shackles of (or been cast aside by) the Aldenata.
"We must go back to the ways of our earliest ancestors, insofar as we are at all able to do so . . . We must cast aside all truck with the demon Aldenata . . . We must grow our own food, relearn our own arts, recreate our own laws . . . We must become Posleen again, and not mere servants or slaves of those who call themselves higher beings."