“I admit that combination of words would have stuck in my throat if I’d still had one,” Sergio conceded, “but if they were in breach of charter before their involvement with you–”
“Not at all,” Bluothesh said, leaning back towards the surface of the chamber, which apparently no longer contained anything that the Blaran could see. Sergio wondered if maybe there were some floating scraps of brain in there for Po Chane to look at. “No, I don’t believe the hallowed Six Species charter has much to say about dealings between extra-legal Blaran communities and the Fergunak. Shall I tell you, Captain Malachi, how this whole sorry series of events started?”
“I would appear to be a captive audience.”
Bluothesh gave a little puff of amusement. “My son, Sydney Po Chane, trespassed on the territory of the Dazzling Aqua Sinking To Black school. It was not a military strike or an act of piracy, although of course I will be naturally inclined to regard my son’s transgressions in a forgiving light. There were certainly elements of daredevilry and shortcut-taking in the decision, perhaps even considerations of espionage and strength-gauging. We can agree, maybe, to call it a non-hostile but dramatically ill-advised error in judgement.”
“Let’s.”
“The Fergunak chased Sydney and his friends back out of their territory, but if there’s been a Fergunakil born with a sense of proportional response, I never met it,” Bluothesh said calmly. “We barely had time to mobilise our clan, bring the Scourge of Hades – our old ship, what’s left of her is out there still – up to code and ready her for long-haul flight. We escaped the Coriel system, but the Dazzling Aqua pursued us. They chased us into interstellar space. They chased us through soft-space.”
“Through soft-space?” Sergio said sceptically. He’d heard exaggerated stories of Fergunakil vendettas – and knew from experience that there were just as many stories that were all too faithful to actual events.
“Their agents were lurking around every hideout we tried to flee to. The whole school was never far behind. They herded us.”
“So you fled into the bonefields?” Sergio took a measured risk.
Po Chane laughed. “You know the myth of the Godfang, then.”
“Not as well as I would have liked,” Sergio said. “If I’d known the Elevator was real…”
“My sentiments exactly, Sergio,” Bluothesh said. “My sentiments exactly.”
“So this – the Flesh Eater really is … ?”
“A scout,” Po Chane replied. “A probe. A component. Whether or not the Destarion is real – well, that remains as much a mystery to me as it is to you, I should say.”
“But you did find the bonefields?”
“Only by accident, Captain. My son…” the ghastly pale figure stood for a time, and Sergio was just wondering if he’d dropped back into computer-speed when he spoke again. “The bonefields are not what you think, Sergio.”
“Go on.”
“We had heard stories. As our options narrowed and our desperation grew, as bolt-hole after bolt-hole closed to us and the sharks circled ever more tightly, we struck out for a volume that was said to contain the bonefields, where we might find refuge – or perhaps a helping hand in the guise of a mythical warship.”
“Looks like you found it.”
“Yes,” Po Chane said, then shook his head. “No. I told you, they’re not what you think,” he paused again, gathering himself. “The Dazzling Aquas caught us. They smashed the Scourge to the point of crippling her, killed almost a third of our crew, dismembered my son and ate him in pieces.”
“And this was while you were in–?”
“Fergunak don’t like Molranoids,” Bluothesh interrupted idly, “did you know that, Sergio? Hard to digest. Stringy. Too many high-density organic chains and compounds. But they can do it,” Sergio didn’t interrupt again. “They let the rest of us go. But then, when we limped back out of the fight, crawled away from the volume to lick our wounds … that’s when we all suddenly caught this delusion. That it hadn’t been the sharks – that it had been the floating bones. The floating bones that had killed us all.”
“What?”
“We forgot that the Dazzling Aquas had caught up with us,” Po Chane said feverishly. “All any of us remembered was that we had gone into the bonefields, and the floating bones had done horrible things…” he shivered and closed his unnatural inky eyes, a gesture that almost made his face look normal again. “We would never have gone back to the bonefields,” he said. “Never.”
“I still don’t understand,” Sergio admitted. “Had you actually entered the bonefields or not?”
“Who knows?” Bluothesh laughed. “Maybe we did, maybe we didn’t. Maybe the Fergunak simply caught us in some random volume of interstellar space, and hurt us, and that was the trauma the bonefields fixed upon. That’s how the bonefields defends itself, Captain Malachi. By making seekers think they have already been there, and that it was so awful, so dangerous, that they would forsake their quest and run away, and never stop running.”
“But you remembered,” Sergio said. “You remembered that it was the Fergunak.”
“Well yes,” Po Chane said with another abrupt laugh. “We remembered, because we went back in there! No, I never meant to take us back to the bonefields. Well, ‘back’, as we all believed it. No. But take us back I did. Entirely by accident. It wasn’t as if we even could go there on purpose – the logs, you see. We purged the logs and marked the volume as clearly as possible – never to return.
“But the sharks believed it too. They forgot that they’d wrought their revenge upon us and that they’d decided to let the rest of us go as a warning to others. As soon as they left the volume, they … well who knows what they thought? Perhaps they thought they’d been attacked by the floating bones as well. I’m fairly sure that’s what they remembered. Either way, they forgot they’d caught up with us. They came after us again. And we forgot that they’d let us go too. As far as we were aware, the damn sharks had chased us into the bonefields, we’d been massacred in there, and we’d flown out again with the sharks still after us.”
“And you went back into the volume you’d marked so clearly as dangerous?”
“The Fergunak drove us in there,” Bluothesh said. “It must have seemed like a fine joke to them, an amusing opportunity. They knew how deadly the ‘bonefields’ were, how desperate we were to avoid ‘the floating bones’, and by pure luck they’d stumbled onto them and had this battered and terrified Blaran crew to throw into Hell. And so they did.”
“And when they did, you remembered what had happened before,” Sergio said, realisation dawning.
“Exactly. Our heads ached, some of us suffered mild delusions and panic symptoms – well, naturally enough, you might say, even for a Molranoid, in a situation like that. And then we remembered that the first time in the bonefields, it hadn’t been the bonefields. It had been those fucking sharks.”
“That’s a strange defence mechanism,” Sergio mused, “but then again, if the Flesh Eater is anything to go by, she’s a strange ship.”
“Thank you,” the Flesh Eater murmured, probably for Sergio’s ears only. If, indeed, the expression had any meaning anymore.
“Believe me, the capacity to scare away a clan like mine, even once, is defence enough,” Bluothesh said. “We would never have gone back there willingly.”
Sergio tried to think about the few AstroCorps-documented cases – those not shrouded in secrecy – of bonefields incursions and exploration. There weren’t enough to form any sort of meaningful statistical set, but it was true that there were zero cases of repeat attempts, by ships, crews, or individuals.
“So you remembered,” he said, “and … what? Struck out deeper into the bonefields in order to escape?”
“Well, despite what we remembered, we were still very concerned about what might be waiting for us in there,” Po Chane replied. “We were recovering, and wondering what to do next, when the Flesh Eater found us.”
“At first, we operated well together,” Bluothesh agreed. “She was curious. She had a mission, of sorts. She wanted to re-establish contact with the human race. I got the impression that the defence keeping people out of the bonefields was a bit too good at keeping people out, which is strange considering that it’s presumably her own defensive measure … but like I said, we never encountered the Godfang herself.”
“Only this component.”
“It wasn’t until later – well, until quite recently – that we came up against limitations in her functionality,” Po Chane continued. “Or in her willingness to exercise said functionality, let’s say.”
“In the meantime, you’d soundly beaten the Fergunak, turned them into the Children of the Bluothesh, and expanded the Flesh Eater to enclose their ships as well as the remains of your own,” Sergio concluded.
“It was mutual desperation, really,” Bluothesh said. “We needed a ship capable of holding atmosphere. The Scourge was dead in space, the Fergunakil ships were mostly unsuitable for us…”
“And she needed a relative drive,” Sergio concluded. Po Chane’s smile deepened horribly.
“Yes,” he replied. “She doesn’t have one of her own. She’s a shuttle. She’s also not really capable of independent operation without some sort of live crew. Even though we were incompatible, we were enough to give her stopgap functionality. We were certainly closer to human, and more useful to her, than the Fergunak were.”
“At which point you came hunting for humans.”
“Compatible humans,” Bluothesh said, leaning in again and placing all four wickedly-bladed hands on the surface of the control chamber. “I think we can dispense with the flirting at this point, Sergio. She’s looking for Elevator People. I’ve never seen one myself – there weren’t any in the Coriel system, none that paid us a visit out on the Hades line – but the Flesh Eater is for some reason quite convinced there is one on board youuurrrrrrr…”
“We need to talk,” Sergio said, pushing himself up to computer registers and watching warily as Bluothesh Po Chane slowed to a frozen mannequin once more.
The Flesh Eater’s voice was as warm and intimate as ever. “As you wish.”
XIX
“The Fergunakil gunships are falling back,” Baadan reported. “Heavy losses, but there’s still over two hundred ships moving out there. I think it accounts for the bulk of their remaining small vessels, those that weren’t burned out in the suppressor formation. Maybe seventy-five with serious guns, but I wouldn’t say they’re a serious threat. The rest could still ram us, I suppose, but without relative capacity they’re going to have a hard time getting close, and it’s doubtful they’ll get through the hull,” she paused. “Depending on the area they target,” she added, in a lower voice.
Yes, Attacus thought, it all depends on that, doesn’t it? And that depends on where they’re getting their information.
He watched the computer-enhanced motes on the viewscreen, wishing that he knew where Charlie had gone and whether it would come back. The great grey leviathan seemed to be operational despite the massive chunks of ice calving from her hull.
When the Flesh Eater had contracted, apparently regurgitating all the Blaran and Fergunakil machinery inside her, she’d also left behind a huge amount of water that the great grey had been steadily extruding into her hull-space. That water, filled with Fergunak, was now flash-freezing and only a few pockets seemed to be equipped with heating units capable of keeping it liquid on the inside. Some Fergunak had fled back into the leviathan, but most of the others were trapped, or perishing.
Still, the great grey was operational, even though the Draka was able to stay out of range of her big guns and vents, and the smaller ships were falling back. She was still a threat – the largest and possibly only threat to the warship, indeed, in the apparent absence of the Flesh Eater and assuming the Blaran wreck really was a wreck. Attacus was more worried, at this point, about why she was falling back. That didn’t really seem like Fergunakil behaviour. Great grey and gunships alike had seemed quite intent on attacking not long previously.
He was also concerned about what the lean, battered-looking Blaran ship was still capable of. And what Bluothesh and his altered clan leaders might be planning.
But most of all, Attacus was worried about his own Fergunakil crewmembers. If they were completely turned, if they were now part of the twisted Children of the Bluothesh school, then they could be doing anything. They could be sabotaging the Draka from within, sending their own gunships out to join the enemy, informing the Flesh Eater of the most critical modules of the warship on which to focus their attacks.
It was as Baadan had already strongly implied – if Drakamod’s school had turned, the Draka was already lost.
If, however, there was a chance the Draka’s Fergunak were uncorrupted, or could salvage themselves in the absence of the Children of the Bluothesh, and if the enemy school still had some sort of alpha system or other gridnet control node on that great grey …
“Bring us about,” he ordered. “Continual scans for weapons signatures and small craft,” he tapped his controls. “Alpha.”
“I was unable to reconnect to any of the bridge giela, Captain Athel,” Drakamod’s voice said from the console. “The link seems to have been commandeered.”
“That’s not important right now,” Attacus said. “What’s your gridnet status?”
“Unfortunately, it is corrupted,” Drakamod said, “as I believe you suspected when we interfered with your navigation.”
“I’ll overlook it this time,” Attacus said dryly, “since my collision jump would most likely not have achieved anything but destroying the great grey and ourselves. Demonstrative, but not the best tactical move in retrospect. However, and in the knowledge that I can’t expect a dependable answer, I need to know–”
“Actually, Captain,” Drakamod interrupted, “and likewise duly acknowledging that I can’t provide a dependable answer, the ram-jump may have been the best thing you could have done. The source of the gridnet corruption was the Flesh Eater’s hull, broadcasting on some sort of deep-resonance band. The Children of the Bluothesh were immersed in it for some time, but we had only begun to feel its effects. When the Flesh Eater contracted, it seems to have interrupted a lot of her offensive processes. Including the gridnet disruption. It was like an electronic bell of sorts, the intensity and effectiveness increased by the surface area of her hull, and when it contracted … we’re compromised, but we’re not Children of the Bluothesh yet.”
Or so you say. “Does that mean you’ll be able to recover?”
“Possibly. We have never encountered anything like this before.”
“What about the other school?”
“The shutdown of the signal has come too late for the Children of the Bluothesh,” Drakamod replied, “but my school might be able to reboot our components. And we may be able to affect a counter-disruption against the corrupted school. In the meantime, I suggest you target the great grey leviathan as you were already, and enact the Mundus protocol.”
Attacus glanced at the console wryly. “You know about the Mundus protocol, then?”
Drakamod synthesised a hackle-stirringly warm laugh. “Of course.”
The Mundus protocol was a slang term for a series of ostensibly secret emergency command-sets that systematically shut out Fergunakil control from the workings of an AstroCorps warship. It did essentially hobble the vessel, if not cripple her entirely, but it was considered preferable to allowing hostile Fergunak to have free rein. Most Captains baked their own set of Mundus protocols into any ship they took command of, ranging from computer lockouts to complete purge-and-detonate sequences on the ship’s aquatic sections. Attacus and Malachi had a sensible middle-of-the-road series they’d arrived at after years of experience – and with due consideration for Sergio’s uncle of the Mercury Triumphant, slaughtered at Mayhem – but they’d never
had to use them.
Attacus had never suspected he would one day enact the Mundus protocol on the request of his own Fergunak crew.
“You’re an extraordinary alpha,” he said quietly, tapping in the commands.
“Yes,” Drakamod said, “I am.”
“Will you mobilise the rest of our gunships?” Athel asked her. “We’re leaving you in control of them but I would advise against turning on the Draka. I understand, of course, if your data corruption makes it difficult–”
“We’ll fly out, Captain Athel,” Drakamod said.
“Good,” Attacus executed the final Mundus protocol command and leaned forward in his chair. “Now,” he went on, “find the Flesh Eater before she brings those Po Chane freaks of hers aboard.”
XX
Sergio floated, or at least in his mind he floated, and looked out at the frozen-in-time Kitander ‘Bluothesh’ Po Chane.
“You’ve integrated me even though I’m almost as incompatible as the Blaren were,” he said to the Flesh Eater, “so tell me. What’s stopping you from doing this to the rest of my crew? Or that?” he wanted to gesture but obviously couldn’t, so he just hoped the ship understood he was referring to himself, and then to the ghastly Bluothesh, respectively. “Because I don’t know how things were done back when the Destarion was commissioned, but I can safely say that none of us will submit to this willingly. Elevator People or not.”
“But you do have one of our people on board your ship,” the Flesh Eater said urgently. “A descendent of the Destarion’s original crew,” Sergio didn’t reply. “My telepathic senses are rudimentary in comparison to the capacity we have at home,” the ship went on, “but I can detect the proximity of a compatible pilot. I’m also detecting traces of Bharriom energy, which … well, it doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but it’s another link in the chain of evidence.”
“Like I said,” Sergio replied, “none of my crew will willingly–”
“A compatible pilot wouldn’t be integrated,” the Flesh Eater said, “not into me. I’m just a Flesh-Eater. He or she would be introduced to the Destarion herself, but this level of immersion is not necessary. Like I said, it was really an accident, you should never have been integrated so completely–”
Deadshepherd (Tales of the Final Fall of Man Anthology Book 1) Page 29