“He doesn’t need to know it’s from Molran stock. Just tell him it’s a nutritious mush we were able to synthesise with our mighty science.”
“Which brings me to my second problem,” Z-Lin continued, unrelenting. “Every time you come up with an idea, I can’t shake the feeling that while it seems entirely logical and reasonable, it is just that little bit more over-the-line than the last idea you came up with, and every time we accept one of these ideas from you it means the line has moved, and one day you and I are going to be looking at each other across a dining table laden with roasted babies and I’m going to go ‘well shit, you’d better pass the salt’.”
“And if you’re going to keep on having that sort of attitude, maybe I won’t pass it to you,” Glomulus sniffed.
“No medical supplies get fed to the alien,” Clue asserted.
“Fine,” the medic remarked in a hurt voice. “With images that graphic in your head it’s a wonder you listen to any of my ideas.”
“Believe me, I try not to,” Z-Lin said, then went on in a grudgingly moderated tone, “but thanks for looking into this.”
The food issue, however, didn’t seem to be of much concern to Rakmanmorion, Conqueror of Space. He told them that he was quite capable of eating his own flesh down to practically nothing, at which point his head, mandibles and pedipalps would go into fugue. He could last centuries that way, millennia if properly treated – and the module was set up for precisely this – before being revitalised by a new feeding cycle. His people were already experimenting with interstellar colonisation in their region of the galaxy, and this remarkable biology was one of main reasons they hadn’t gone all-out on superluminal tech.
There was not much of any use for the Tramp left on board Boonie’s Last Stand, but they took a few of the spare hull plates that were going begging, and some other raw materials that might turn out to be useful down the line.
The ables eventually declared the drive operational after a few dry-runs, the field adjusted to the unorthodox hull configuration and the bulky one-use power cell. The one-way journey through soft-space was programmed exhaustively based on the coordinates of Rakmanmorion’s homeworld. The ship was prepared to be fired back into The Second World’s system with its precious cargo of technology and information about the big, bad galaxy. The Small People would, with just a little luck, intercept Rakmanmorion as he passed close to The Second World and return him to the surface, and take the warnings of the Six Species to heart.
Using the Tramp’s anti-impact countermeasure catchment arms, they manually towed Rakmanmorion’s little ship away from Boonie’s Last Stand, to a minimum safe distance and up to a solid cruising velocity. While neither the Boonie nor the Tramp herself were massive enough to cause damage to the alien craft and her new single-use engine, it was better to enter relative speed while in a volume free of large objects. A small planet, for example, had a space-time indent heavy enough to rip even a Worldship to pieces. Already being in motion also helped, although Rakmanmorion was probably hardy enough to deal with the effects even if they were applicable to his anatomy.
“Farewell, spoonbiters,” Rakmanmorion intoned as the final checks and launch procedures were completed, the Tramp uncoupled her catchers and everyone on the bridge crossed their fingers. “Farewell, chary folk. Farewell, The Thord. May we meet again as [friends] when you come to [scavenge] spare components [tagged by and belonging to you].”
“I’m sure he didn’t mean ‘scavenge’,” Decay murmured. They were once again all gathered on the bridge for the send-off. Even Monty and Stron, the ables responsible for Rakmanmorion’s new star drive, had been invited to attend. “It’s just the most convenient way of saying ‘salvage’.”
“Isn’t ‘salvage’ the most convenient way of saying ‘salvage’?” Zeegon asked. “I think he’s making fun of us again.”
“Farewell, Rakmanmorion, Conqueror of Space,” Z-Lin Clue said formally, overriding the rest of the crew. “The Six Species wishes you a–”
Through the viewscreens, Waffa watched the ship’s relative field activate. It wasn’t something you saw from the outside very often, and they were already peeling away past the safe-distance point so it wasn’t exactly an up-close and personal view. All in all, it was rather anti-climactic. The misshapen spacecraft doubled for a split-second, one illusory copy of the ship turned red and the other blue, and then the whole lot winked out of existence. The disappearance was accompanied by no sensation that Waffa could detect.
“–safe voyage,” Clue concluded wryly. Decay sniggered.
“Taking us to maximum cruising velocity,” Zeegon said, and Waffa could tell he too was grinning, “course laid in, preparing to jump to relative. Next stop, the enticing MundCorp Research Base.”
The remaining legs of the flight grew generally longer than the early ones, and it was seven weeks to the Fleet research station that was their next stop. About a week into the flight, Waffa woke up from an extremely powerful but elusive and formless dream. There had been pain and confusion and loneliness, he’d been trapped and fearful and separated from his own kind, encased by cold walls without knowing why. It had been thoroughly disorienting.
He knew, intellectually, that it was just another echo of Thord’s mind as she dealt with her solitude and the separation from the larger Dreamscape that occurred when an aki’Drednanth was in soft-space. But the association he reflexively drew – and which was very hard to discard – was with the eejits who had died because of the stupid pranks Waffa had been involved in. The only vivid image that stayed in his mind after the dream ended was of the Tramp’s confining walls, and it was impossible to avoid placing Sticky, Bumfluff and Jocko into that image, cutting their way industriously out to decompression and death. He woke up with tears wetting his face.
“Damn it,” he muttered.
It was, he concluded, probably a bit of a combination – Thord’s unintended brain-shouting, and Waffa’s enduring remorse over the screw-up. Sticky, Bumfluff and Jocko hadn’t exactly been top-shelf eejits, although Bumfluff had known how to handle a cutting torch provided you pointed him in the right direction with it. Which was probably, now Waffa came to think about it, one of the main reasons the three of them were dead now.
Since before their detour to Boonie’s Last Stand, Waffa had been half-heartedly collating the reports on their lost eejits and their current resources-to-requirements ratios. They’d shifted considerably into the positive as the farm settled down and recovered productivity after their renovation, and after they’d dropped off those Molran survivalists at Eshret.
Now, since they’d lost some more eejits and fabricator plant repairs in Þursheim were off the menu, he had submitted his reports and received official approval. Their crew complement could increase comfortably and they would all be able to keep breathing.
It was time to start printing eejits again.
Waffa was humming tunelessly to himself and tapping up some random pre-reports on his watch – it was always good to get a few templates ready to just fill in the blanks and shoot off, since there was a bunch of essentially-identical tasks in the pipeline – as he stepped onto the elevator. He was so engrossed that he didn’t even notice quiet, looming Dunnkirk standing in one corner.
“Helloes,” the rotund Bonshoon said with a cheerful wave of his left hands. Waffa jumped.
“Jesus, I almost shat,” he blurted, then shook his head sheepishly. “Sorry mate. I was miles away.”
“Miles – oh, is figure of speech,” Dunnkirk nodded with a gleaming grin. His AstroCorps standard language skills were improving rapidly, proportional to his ability to categorise almost everything he didn’t immediately understand as a ‘figure of speech’. Which, to be fair, it usually was.
“Yeah. Sorry. Just … how can a big bloke like you be so quiet and invisible, eh?”
Dunnkirk spread his meaty arms, displaying the flowing waist-length shirt he was wearing. “I am have okshani that is same colour as elevator
walls,” he said.
“That’d do it,” Waffa agreed.
“I am give okshani on the Prufrock,” Dunnkirk said, then corrected himself, “I was given. It was a gift from a Bonshoon who wanted the…” here he made an obscure but evidently-sardonic little gesture with his lower right hand, “…the blessing of the aki’Drednanth.”
“Hah,” Waffa said. They descended through the exchange, flipped smoothly, and ascended towards the plant level. “Where are you heading, tiger?”
“I was thinking … did you have a dream, Waffa?” Dunnkirk said, suddenly hesitant. They reached the plant and the Bonshoon disembarked with Waffa.
“Yeah,” Waffa frowned, pausing in the corridor. “I thought they were supposed to have stopped, or settle down, but this one was as mad as they were when we were just out of Seven Widdershins.”
“I am a little barash – envy – envious – that you sleep and have a dream,” Dunnkirk told him. “It is must be strange and wondrous.”
“You can have it,” Waffa grunted. “Why are they still happening?”
“It may to do with the seed,” Dunnkirk said seriously, “I think this is so. Thord is … distracted, she is agitated. There are things.”
“‘Things’?” Waffa said.
“Things that bother,” Dunnkirk said, visibly uncomfortable. “Everybody has very difficult and is tense.”
“Can’t argue with that,” Waffa said, resuming his stroll. “Whole lot of uncertainty floating around,” he glanced at the Bonshoon and smiled a little as he saw Dunnkirk assiduously file this statement under ‘figure of speech’. “So, you coming with me to watch the plant print out some eejits?”
Dunnkirk blinked his wide greenish-yellow eyes in astonishment. “I – yes – I – may I?” he stammered.
Waffa shrugged. “No rule against it, as long as you don’t push any buttons.”
“No, of course no. I was hoping I could join. I am curious. I like to see.”
“Well, we have here an order to print twenty new boys,” Waffa said, tapping his watch. “So that’ll take – at between ninety-two and two hundred and fifty-six minutes per dude – anywhere between thirty-one and eighty-five hours. If things go pear-shaped – uh, if things go wrong, then we may need to abort a few prints and start over, so that’ll add to the time. But here’s to hoping.”
They followed the corridor around to the chamber containing the gleaming cluster of huge round machines that made up the mysterious fabrication plant. Waffa immediately busied himself with the minimal programming he needed to perform on the interface before the fabrication process initiated. Most of it was handled internally, the machine interpreting the simple commands and forming a body and mind out of them. Most of the rest was encoded into the print orders.
Once the commands were completed and the great pale bulk – presumably – began its work, Waffa tapped his watch to start the clock and gestured towards the little lounge setting built into a nearby alcove. He’d long since dragged one of the more comfortable armchairs out to rest close by the product aperture of the plant, since he was usually the only person here and liked to be sitting close at-hand when the eejit emerged, but he didn’t suppose there was any harm in sitting a bit further from the action, in the name of companionship.
“And this is it?” Dunnkirk said, looking in surprise at the interface panels and then sitting down on a couch opposite Waffa.
“That’s it,” Waffa said, and put his feet up on the little table in between them. “Just a few options to select, and then print. The whole thing is just magic-level tech as far as I’m concerned, which is why none of us have any idea how to fix it. We tried opening it up once, but were very lucky to get the panels back in place without breaking the whole plant completely. Between you and me,” he went on, “I usually have so much crap to do – reports and engineering stuff – that printing eejits is the closest thing I get to a break. But since we have a few ables now, I actually have a bit of spare time. I could still be performing other official duties while I sit here, but right now it’s pretty quiet.”
“I understand,” Dunnkirk said with a solemn wink.
Waffa grinned. “It should actually be possible for a technician to set the plant to print and configure, then just leave. The able would come out after five hundred and twenty minutes, find his uniform printed there–” he pointed at an alcove not far from the main product aperture, near his usual armchair, “–put it on and just mosey on to wherever he was meant to work. But with these boys, it’s better to have someone standing by. Or in this case, sitting.”
“It makes sense,” Dunnkirk nodded gravely. “And does the, is it body comes from this,” he pointed at one part of the machine, “and then the mind, the configure, comes, is done here?” he pointed to the closer module, with the ports in its sides.
“Buggered if I know for sure,” Waffa admitted, “but yeah, that big one there, that’s where most of the actual machine-noise comes from and that’s where you feed the carbon and other stuff in, so I’d guess that’s where the meat gets printed up,” he lifted his feet off the table. “Get you a drink?” he pointed towards a dispenser at the back of the alcove.
Dunnkirk, lost in apparent contemplation of the plant – Waffa worked with Contro and he knew the facial expression of a body not in current possession of its entire conscious mind, whether it was human or Bonshoon – blinked and turned to the Chief of Security and Operations. “Is zolo?”
“Of course,” Waffa replied. “What else would an AstroCorps drinks dispenser have?”
They sat for a while, sipping their drinks in silence. Dunnkirk once again seemed distracted, perhaps even honest-to-goodness lost in thought.
It was, however, the Bonshoon who eventually spoke up to break the monotony. “So,” he said, “we are headed to MundCorp.”
“Yep,” Waffa said. “MundCorp Research Base. Home of Big Gravity. And with you three on board, we might actually be allowed to dock and use the guest facilities,” the Bonshoon looked at him in confusion, and Waffa grinned. “I spent time as a trainee shipping eggers and equipment from The Warm to Mundy,” he explained. “That is, two years, two six-month-long straight jags out and two six-month-long straight jags back. None of these fancy-schmancy detours to exchange gossip with Wynstoners and drink Widdershins hooch and rescue giant ticks in distress. Six months in soft-space each way. I think my mum was hoping it would convince me that AstroCorps ships weren’t for me, but in the end all it did was convince me that milk runs on the Dublin Reception weren’t for me.”
“Ah,” Dunnkirk said, “and the scientists at MundCorp were not the most welcoming?”
Waffa gave a short laugh. “You could say that. MundCorp is top-secret and Fleet proprietary, which means Molren make up almost the entire population, or staff, or whatever you’d call them. I think there’s three, maybe four humans who have ever been on board. The base itself is supposedly a relic of some sort, like The Warm, but the entire thing is encased in a couple of old Worldship hulls. One of them is the Mundus herself, the original MundCorp ship … the other one, I don’t know.”
“I don’t know either,” Dunnkirk offered, as Waffa took a drink. The Bonshoon was slightly distant again – it seemed to come and go.
“It’s also apparently the relic that’s the source of exchange technology,” Waffa went on, “since MundCorp is the Fleet research group responsible for its use in all the Fleet ships and throughout AstroCorps. Big Gravity, like the joke. But I don’t buy that. The Worldships and the rest of the Fleet had gravity exchange tech long before they came out here and built the base. I always took it to just be mutterings, you know, from people who have a chip on their shoulder about Molren or whatever.”
“A chip?”
“Figure of speech,” Waffa said with a slight smile. “Anyway, it’s top secret. We never got to even dock with them, the two times I was out here. They’d send out an R&R tug, load our cargo onto it while we pissed it up, then they’d fly it back to Mundy a
nd we’d go home.”
“Pissed … ?” Dunnkirk’s frown cleared. “You mean the drinking.”
“Oh yeah,” Waffa said fondly. “Usually the stuff we’d delivered on the previous milk-run, you know?”
“I think yes,” Dunnkirk said, then went on more hesitantly. “I also think, it – Maladin said that is maybe an exchange problem, that you had your big ‘The Accident’ and…” he trailed off with a helpless little wave of his upper hands, and went back to looking pensively at the plant. “He said he thinks.”
“It was the exchange,” Waffa said, keeping his tone neutral. “What made Maladin think so?”
“It was – at The Warm, the humans were all killed very easy, they died hard, fast,” Dunnkirk said, earnest and apologetic in equal measure. “The ables, they were tougher. No offence. I mean, I say wrong, many survived.”
“No offence taken, mate,” Waffa said quietly. “So I guess Maladin started wondering why the ables all died on the Tramp, and it was a few humans who survived – humans and one Blaran,” Dunnkirk spread his lower hands, and Waffa smiled. “And the only kind of technical failure that might qualify is the sort that would screw up the exchange.”
“He says he thinks.”
“It’s true,” Waffa shrugged. “It wasn’t a collision or a hull breach or a life-support glitch. The exchange … did what it did … and yeah. As well as killing almost everyone on board, it also killed all the ables. Even if some of them might have survived the primary effects, there’s something in the configuration, or their guidance filaments. The same reason the computers got messed up and the plant is now broken, also basically broke the brains of the … I think it was seven or eight ables whose bodies we actually found. And the plant’s made eejits ever since.”
“Do you think you ask the MundCorps to check your exchange?”
Drednanth: A Tale of the Final Fall of Man Page 22