He could remember the gigantic thread creature, whom he’d named Quinn. He also recalled his mostly unsuccessful efforts to develop a language they could both use to communicate. The only result of that had been a failed escape attempt. Yes, perhaps it was better that his memory of most of that time was vague.

  “I always hated those things,” said Cherry, referring to the thread creatures.

  “Well, considering they nearly killed you,” Ethan replied, “that’s understandable. Or maybe they wouldn’t have killed you. Maybe they would have kept you captive in the lake like they did with Rudra and his little girl.”

  Cherry shuddered. “I would have gone crazy. I don’t know how you survived. I can’t believe those things are intelligent. If I never see another one of them again it’ll be too soon.”

  Ethan smiled.

  “What’s so funny?” Cherry asked.

  “You know the Woken have named the threads after you, don’t you?” Ethan asked in return.

  “What?!”

  “Yeah,” Garwin said, chuckling. “Even I knew that. They called them… What is it, Ethan?”

  “Fila cherryensia,” Ethan said, adding a flourish to the important-sounding words.

  “You’re kidding,” said Cherry.

  “How come you didn’t know?” Garwin asked. “Didn’t they tell you?”

  “No one told me anything,” Cherry said, not finding the new information at all funny. “And I’ve been kinda busy with the clean up.” She gave a huff of frustration and watched the scenery for a minute or so. Drawing up the blanket she was sitting on until it was around her shoulders, she said, “Do you think if I ask them they’ll change it?”

  Ethan and Garwin only laughed in reply.

  ***

  An hour and a half later, they were drawing near the ocean, traveling along what remained of the narrow valley that held a dried-up river bed. The cleft was considerably shallower than it had been. The floor of the valley was choked with mud and sand and the hills were bare of vegetation. Recalling the distance the land lay above the ocean, Ethan was astounded by the visual evidence of the tsunami’s height. The wave hadn’t only reached to the top of the hills, it must have been even higher than them in order to rip out every plant and destroy the peaks.

  Anticipation gnawed at Ethan as Garwin flew the flitter toward the gap where a waterfall had once tumbled hundreds or perhaps thousands of years previously. The smell of the ocean was strong through the open windows of the flitter, though it carried the undertones of rotting that emanated everywhere the tsunami had passed.

  Suddenly Cherry grabbed Ethan’s arm. She pointed ahead, gaping.

  Ethan followed her fingertip’s direction until he saw it too. How had he missed it? Perhaps it had been obscured by the shelf clouds that had gathered around it, building up to a downpour. But now that he did finally see it, his mouth also hung open. No words fitted the spectacle.

  Garwin saw it next. His hands fell from the flitter’s controls. The vehicle continued flying on, passing along the final stretch that led to the open ocean.

  The Nova Fortuna stood directly in front of them, massive beyond imagining, arcing high over the water. Dark gray against the gray clouds, the vessel hulked like a mechanical monster of the deep, risen to menace all of Concordia.

  A storm was approaching. The harsh wind was whipping huge waves around the colony ship’s lower half but they looked like ripples in a puddle. Even the clouds swelling up as they watched were dwarfed by the size of the colony ship.

  As the shock of the astounding sight began to ease, Ethan felt a quickening hope. If at least part of the ship remained intact, that had to mean that some of its cargo was salvageable. All they had to do was to get to inside.

  “I never realized it was so big,” Garwin said as his hands returned to the controls. “You know what? Judging by the shape of the arc, that isn’t even half of it.”

  Ethan saw what he meant. The Nova Fortuna’s cylindrical living section had formed a complete circle. Only a little more than a third of a circle stood out of the ocean.

  “How much of it do you think is underwater?” Cherry asked.

  “Depends on how deep the ocean bed is,” Garwin replied. “But I don’t think it’s deep enough to hold the rest of the cylinder. Most of what we can’t see must have smashed to pieces.”

  “But I heard that nearly all of the ship had smashed to pieces,” Ethan said. “I thought we would only be able to scavenge the wreckage.”

  “Yeah, me too,” said Cherry. “Someone told me that all they could find after the tsunami was a submerged section, and the water was a soup of ship’s remains.”

  “So what’s happened?” Ethan asked rhetorically. “This is kinda hard to miss.”

  Neither Cherry nor Garwin answered. Ethan was lost for ideas too.

  Despite the fact that the afternoon was turning to evening, they decided to venture over the waves to the Nova Fortuna and take a closer look. As the flitter was gliding along above the water, however, Ethan wondered if they’d made the right decision. Their vehicle hadn’t shown any faults on their journey but that didn’t mean that it wouldn’t suddenly fail. Their flitter had been subjected to fire and water and it had been buried under tonnes of mud.

  If the engine suddenly died they probably wouldn’t have enough momentum to return to the shore, and it wouldn’t be long before they plunged into the water. None of them could swim. There was also the possibility that the ocean was full of Cherry’s namesakes. If that was the case they might survive but Ethan didn’t relish the idea of becoming a captive of the threads again.

  The remaining intact section of the Nova Fortuna rose imposingly into the sky two and three-quarter kilometers from shore.

  “Looks like a… What do they call them in the vids?” Cherry asked. “A skyscraper. That’s it.”

  “I don’t think the people on Earth ever built skyscrapers that tall,” said Garwin.

  The Nova Fortuna’s upper portion disappeared into the clouds that had gathered. A cool, humid wind was blowing in through the flitter’s broken windows, and the gray mist that curtained the distance between the clouds and the water told of the rain they could expect ahead.

  “Do you remember the first rain?” Ethan asked.

  “Just before the stadium bombing?” said Garwin. “Sure. What an experience that was. All my life I’d learned that water was precious and had to be conserved, and there it was, falling from the sky, more of it than I’d ever imagined could exist.”

  “Hmm,” Cherry said, also savoring the memory. “But seeing the ocean for the first time was even better. When we lived in the caves I used to love watching it. I could watch the water for hours. But I changed my opinion after falling into it.” She looked out the window and down at the waves below. “I hope I never do that again.”

  “You could learn to swim,” said Garwin.

  “No point,” Ethan said. “Unless you want to become an experimental subject for the threads. Assuming we get through the next few months and years, I doubt anyone will be going near open water again.”

  When they were nearly at the ship, the rain squall hit them, bursting through the open windows and showering them with freezing cold water.

  “Urgh,” Cherry said. “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. Maybe we should go back home and come again tomorrow.”

  Ethan thought the same, though not for the same reason. The sun had disappeared behind dark clouds. They wouldn’t see it again that day. Evening would fall long before sunset, bringing sluglimpets with it. And they were a long way from the settlement.

  “We’ve come this far,” Garwin said. “We might as well continue.”

  The Nova Fortuna now took up all their view. The gigantic face of the cylinder wall towered into the darkening sky. As they drew closer, the scars of its long journey through space became evident. There was hardly a spot on its surface that wasn’t scored, dented, or discolored.

  Only a handful of Gens were qualified to spacewalk, individuals who had been tasked with completing the repairs that could only take place on the exterior of the colony ship’s hull. Consequently, Ethan had never seen the outside of the ship up close. For the first time ever, he felt grateful to the long-dead engineers who had constructed the vessel. Their work had protected him all his life yet he’d never given them a second thought.

  “Can we go inside?” Cherry asked.

  “I guess it’s possible if we can find an air lock,” Garwin replied. The emergency release might still work.”

  “Some people were inside it when it crashed,” Cherry said. “Giesen and two techs in the reproduction center. Do you think they could still be alive?”

  Ethan realized the latter two must have been close acquaintances of Cariad’s.

  “Very unlikely,” Garwin replied. “If they weren’t in the section that was crushed when the ship hit, the force of the impact must have been tremendous. It would have killed them.”

  “If they were alive,” Ethan added, “I think we would have heard from them by now.”

  “But their comm went down during the battle,” said Cherry.

  Garwin said. “I’m sorry, but I’m pretty sure they didn’t make it.”

  “You all thought that about me, though,” said Cherry. “I’m not giving up hope yet.”

  “All right,” said Garwin. “If we make it inside the ship, the first thing we’ll do is look for them. I guess there’s a chance they might have survived but they’re injured.”

  They’d arrived at the pitted, scarred surface. Garwin turned the flitter’s nose upward and they rose higher, skimming the metal.

  “Keep your eyes open for airlocks,” Garwin said. “I don’t know where we are relative to what’s inside. Do you two have any ideas?”

  But Ethan and Cherry didn’t know either. The colony ship had several air locks and they all knew their location on the inside. The outside of the ship was new terrain, however. It was also difficult to see far in the deepening twilight and steady rain. The flitter’s light seemed particularly dim too. Perhaps it was damaged. Garwin flew over the upper edge of the cylinder wall and down the other side. Nothing appeared that looked like an airlock.

  Ethan leaned out of the window to try to scan for holes or badly impacted areas of hull they might be able to break through. The downpour hit him on the back of his head and neck.

  “Hey,” Cherry protested. “You’re making a waterfall in here.”

  Ethan pulled in his head. The rain had run down his back and puddled on the seat, but it was already wet from the downpour.

  “I can see something,” said Garwin. He turned the flitter’s nose downward. They flew for half a minute toward the water where the ocean waves were growing larger. The surging water was hurling itself against the downed ship’s sides.

  Ethan saw where they were heading. At a point about twenty meters above sea level, something large had hit the ship and left a crater. It was possibly a way in.

  Garwin brought the flitter to a standstill at the lip of the crater, which was about as wide as Ethan was tall and more than half a meter deep. The projectile that had created the deep dent hadn’t succeeded in penetrating the hull. Its center lay in shadow but it was solid.

  “Let’s try it,” said Garwin. “We don’t have much light left.”

  Ethan handed him one of the Guardians’ weapons, and he and Cherry took the other two.

  “I’ll shoot at the middle where the hull will be at its thinnest,” said Ethan. “You two concentrate your fire in the same place.”

  He pressed the trigger, letting loose the beam of energy from the weapon. Cherry and Garwin did the same. The rain that was pouring down the hull was vaporized and clouds of hazy steam and smoke erupted from their target. The hiss the beams created was almost as loud as the pounding of water drops on the ocean below.

  “Stop for a moment,” said Ethan.

  They waited a while to allow the steam and smoke to clear. When they had, Ethan saw that the weapon fire had cut a hole in the surface but hadn’t penetrated the hull. He didn’t know how thick the hull was, but he guessed that the depth was probably at least three or four meters. If they wanted to break through it that day they were going to be there a long time, and their light was nearly gone.

  He debated whether they should call a halt and head back to dry land. But Cherry’s speculation that there might be people still alive inside the ship made him want to continue.

  “Eurgh,” Cherry exclaimed. “Look at the water.”

  Ethan peered down. Only a short distance below them, thin dark brown and gray patterned tentacles writhed in the waves. The ocean was alive with threads.

  Chapter Nine

  Cariad was killing time until the next flight going planetside. She’d been forced to spend the rest period in Ethan’s tiny cabin. Unless she fancied sleeping among a bunch of toddlers it had been the only free space aboard the ship. The room hadn’t changed since she’d left it, and the memories it conjured up made her elated, sad, and annoyed.

  While waiting for her flight she was organizing the boxes of emergency rations in the hold, stacking them near the door so that others wouldn’t have so far to carry them. Her comm button chirped. Strongquist wanted to speak to her.

  “Cariad, could you please join us on the bridge?” he asked when she opened the comm.

  “Sure,” she replied. She pushed a box into place, straightened up, and wiped the sleeve of her shirt across her sweaty forehead.

  The Guardians had resumed control of the Mistral with breathtaking speed and efficiency. Strongquist's fellow androids strode purposefully around the ship, taking stock and examining every part. Guardians taken over the medical bay, others ran engine checks. The ship’s captain, Faina, and the other android officers had returned to the bridge. Gens who had manned the scanners and navigation handed over their jobs to their Guardian replacements.

  Strongquist had asked Cariad if she knew where Aubriot was. She guessed that the android might have wanted to talk to him about the Mistral’s weapon systems. But Aubriot seemed to have disappeared.

  Leaving the hold, Cariad walked through the corridors to the bridge. A stream of young children ran toward her, parted to go around her, and closed together again on the other side, laughing and screaming as they sped along.

  Not far behind them came a frazzled-looking young man. Cariad gave him a sympathetic smile as he hurried after his charges. The youngest children had been evacuated to the ship before the arrival of the tsunami and had lived there ever since. They didn’t appear to be having too hard a time of it, though the same couldn’t be said of the adults looking after them.

  It was a bittersweet sight. Cariad had always had a soft spot for babies and children and her affection for them had been a large part of the motivation behind her choice of career. Paradoxically, she’d never wanted any of her own, reasoning that she would find it harder to concentrate on her work. Still, it was heart-warming to see the little ones.

  Yet the situation of the colony was precarious at best. What was going to happen to all those small boys and girls who had been let loose on the ship? Cariad doubted the attacking aliens would balk at murdering them regardless of their age. The aliens probably viewed the colonists as vermin infesting a planet in their neighborhood or perhaps they saw humans as a threat. Who knew what they thought? Vasquez had been right when he’d said it was difficult if not impossible to guess.

  That was one reason that the colonists must not give up even though the situation did seem hopeless. Of all the scenarios Cariad had imagined for the playing out of the Nova Fortuna project, this had not been one. But the future was still open. Perhaps the little children could survive, somehow.

  An idea had occurred to Cariad as she’d been stacking the boxes and she resolved to carry it through. She would set up a medical clinic planetside. Now that the Guardians could work with the more serious cases in the sick bay, that freed up Dr. Kurtz and the medic, Alasdair. She was sure they would be happy to be involved. As soon as whatever business Strongquist wanted to discuss on the bridge was over, she would begin gathering supplies to take down. It would probably mean missing the next shuttle but she could take a later flight.

  She arrived at the bridge and the door drew back. The semi-circular space was full of Guardians. Anahi and Vasquez had left and Cariad hadn’t seen Aubriot since their altercation. Only Addleson remained, the one organic being among all the artificial intelligences.

  Strongquist was standing over the captain’s seat speaking with Faina. It was an odd sight. As Cariad understood it the Guardians only needed to use speech to communicate with humans. She guessed she probably knew very little about how the androids operated.

  “Thank you for coming,” Strongquist said to Cariad when he saw her.

  “I assume you have something important to discuss,” said Cariad. “Is anyone else joining us?”

  “No,” the android replied. “We have some information we would rather disseminate only to you. Addleson already knows. Perhaps you can decide between yourselves who else should be informed and when.”

  Cariad recalled Strongquist telling her the Guardians had singled her out as a personality well-suited to running the colony. It was another example of how they sometimes got things wrong. Every colonist knew who was best for the Leader’s job. Everyone except the person in question.

  Cariad noticed that Addleson was looking depressed.

  “Is it bad news?” she asked.

  “It is useful information,” replied Strongquist. “Whether it’s good or bad depends on your prior conceptions.”

  “Okay,” Cariad said, exasperated by the android’s pedantry and calm, measured tones in the face of disaster. “Just tell me.”

  “Shall I explain?” Faina asked him.

  “By all means,” Strongquist said, giving the Mistral’s captain a slight smile.

  “I believe you’re already aware that we detected some signs of intelligent life during our journey to Concordia?” Faina said.

 

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