Exodus, page 58
“Does Uixic have anything worth buying?”
“There are some interesting desert biologicals called rockrot, akin to the rhizomorph fungals used for asteroid biomining, possibly left over from the Kiu age. It takes them decades, even using the intensity and heat of a desert sun, but they leach specific minerals out of rock. If applied properly, they can produce the purest crystal conductors. They are quite specialist, and the navy has many applications for quality photonic systems. So yes, we have a legitimate cover story.”
“And these rockrots are in the White Burn Desert?”
“Exactly. Several local enterprises have seeded fields of rockrot, including the Guillrameos. Now, let’s get ready to greet the natives.”
They dressed in long hooded robes with five active-nano layers contained in the fabric, capable of protecting them from kinetic impact and energy beam strikes. Ualana-Lyon inspected the boy, making sure the garment was fitting correctly. If he was right about the family Guillrameos, he didn’t want to take any chances.
The spaceplane’s air stair deployed from the airlock, and they went out into the city.
* * *
—
The mingled patches on the Annoton’s hull reached a meter across, giving them a massive amount of processing power. They used it to identify the starship’s sensor systems and began to gather around them. Millimeter by millimeter, they crept over the receivers, their internal molecular circuits modifying themselves into active filters. The scans, active and passive, were edited to remove any abnormal activity. To the Annoton’s CI, the ship’s orbit around Uixic was perfectly normal; no ships were nearby, no micrometeorites threatened the fuselage. In reality, what had been a gentle drizzle of flecks now became a blizzard.
* * *
—
It had taken a day of meetings, and long negotiations for photonic conductor crystals with several local enterprises, before Ualana-Lyon was given a face-to-face meeting with Iuntin-Detlef, who was the senior representative of the Guillrameo family. Iuntin-Detlef was charming and knowledgeable about the whole industry of rockrot and the many variants of photonic conductor crystals they produced. Ualana-Lyon matched his interest with enthusiasm and managed to secure an invitation out to the Guillrameo compound.
“Tomorrow?” Pavel asked. “How did you manage that?”
“Father makes an excellent merchant,” Shoigu said. “You should hear him talk. Even I believed we are a trading enterprise.”
“It is just a simple rider,” Ualana-Lyon said. “I have met so many people in so many professions that designing a thought routine bundle to emulate their personality is relatively easy. And I have led many high-level trade delegations for our queen in my time, once with representatives of the Eternal Unanimity Dominion, so handling Iuntin-Detlef was simplicity itself.”
“We’ll be monitoring you through the netsats,” Pavel said. “If there’s any trouble, the surface slammer will be with you right away.”
“I knew I could depend on you.”
* * *
—
After a day and a half in orbit, the Annoton could easily be mistaken for a failed Remnant Era attempt to bioform a small asteroid. The smooth ultrabonded hull had vanished, buried underneath a two-meter-thick coating of brittle ochre blisters, resembling a knobbly fruit of petrified rubber.
The merged flecks were now a single unified synthetic entity, which its creators called a slowball. It knew its own shape and purpose now, and was aware of the ship it had grown around and would isolate from the rest of the universe.
Inside the submerged hangar bay, the molecular structure of the amalgamation around the airlock changed again, sending out micron-thin fibers to penetrate the seal and ooze their way into the ship.
* * *
—
Ualana-Lyon was a little surprised when Iuntin-Detlef arrived the next morning. He was accompanied by a human woman he introduced as Liliana.
“Our family’s commercial emissary on Anoosha,” he explained. “The human industries are a good market for us.”
“But we’re hoping to expand,” Liliana said. “I’d like to assist with your negotiations. I do have some experience in the field.”
“I’m sure you do,” Ualana-Lyon said, trying not to sound too patronizing. But really…even an Imperial Celestial brought up on Uixic should know better than to fraternize with some ghastly human, let alone involve one directly in a family enterprise.
“Our transport is here,” she said.
Ualana-Lyon had perfect control over his responses, so concealed his disapproval at the ground vehicle that was rolling toward them. He’d been expecting to fly out to the Guillrameo compound, especially as the spaceplane afforded them an extra level of security. Shoigu, however, frowned at the vehicle.
“Stay alert,” Ualana-Lyon told Lucio over the secure netsat lnc. “This may be nothing, but without the spaceplane we can’t make a fast withdrawal on our own.”
“Then why are you agreeing if it makes you suspicious?”
“It is not suspicious in itself. We are guests of the family Guillrameo; to cause a fuss, or to question, would raise questions about us at this point. I have to go to the Guillrameo compound. I need to see them in their natural environment to measure their character.”
“Okay, father. Good luck.”
* * *
—
Iuntin-Detlef’s vehicle was a big six-wheeled multi-terrain rover, with straightforward rectangular mirror-silver bodywork and radiator fins protruding from the roof as if a hasty afterthought. Something suggested it hadn’t originally been designed to accommodate people. Ualana-Lyon could easily imagine that its original mechanical systems had been scooped out to create the cabin space. And it’d certainly seen a lot of use. When Ualana-Lyon got up close, he could see that the surface was only nominally silver; a multitude of dents and scratches tarnished the polished finish. Several scratches were parallel lines.
“Claw marks?” he queried. And just for a moment his mind went directly to a bloodlien.
“Yes,” Iuntin-Detlef agreed eagerly. His smile was just a little too effusive. There was something almost human about such gaucheness. Probably because he has no bloodstone spurs to partially mask his features, Ualana-Lyon thought. As he’d found out since they landed, bloodstone had never caught on among Uixic’s Celestial population. “There are packs of Awakened camels out in the desert,” Iuntin-Detlef said. “They’ve all run wild now, of course. Some genius thought it’d be a good idea to give them retractable claws in their hoofs. There are predators roaming the deep desert, you see.”
The multi-terrain rover’s door swung up, and Iuntin-Detlef gestured gracefully. Inside, the couches were draped in hand-woven rugs with colorful rosette and mahi patterns. An android waited motionlessly as they entered. Ualana-Lyon couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen such an ancient model; it was obese compared to modern versions.
The door closed up and the multi-terrain rover set off out of the city, heading north across the baked stony ground.
“Stephein-Engel, would you and your son care for some tea?” Liliana asked politely.
“Most kind, thank you.”
An android poured cups from a silver samovar. Ualana-Lyon was intrigued to see an actual flame burning underneath to keep it hot. He received his cup and discreetly used the antenna in his robe’s cuff to scan the liquid inside. It was tea, no toxins or unidentified nanomolecules present. He took a sip, annoyed with himself to realize his heart was racing.
“So,” Iuntin-Detlef said, “Stephein-Engel, do you have contacts with the enterprises that build ships for the Wynid Navy? We have sought a place on their approved list for some time, but our political reach is sadly lacking.”
* * *
—
Pavel woke to find Lucio standing over him. The cabin light was dim; in fact, it was the blue-green glimmer of secondary lighting. He sat up quickly. “What’s wrong?”
“The ship is losing power,” Lucio told him.
“What do you mean? How can it lose power?” His hand came down on the contact bulb. There was nothing; it was as if his neural induction pad had touched a lump of inert metal.
“I don’t know,” Lucio said. And now Pavel could hear the worry in his spawn brother’s voice.
“It’s okay.” They clasped each other’s hands, and their thoughts merged, reinforcing confidence and determination. Brothers together! Yes. We’re strong this way.
“What does work?” Pavel asked.
“Not much.” Lucio’s memory of the last few minutes showed the lights in the main cabin failing. The contact bulb he immediately put his hand on was dead. Backup systems came on, including the secondary lighting. More ominously, the constant streams of air coming out of the grills had stopped.
“How could this happen?” Pavel asked, more puzzled than worried.
Together their minds ran through the ship’s systems. Even if all three primary generators had failed, there was enough ancillary power stored to restart each one of them. Together they arrived at exactly the same conclusion: it’s not possible for an accident to cause this.
“It’s a deep burn,” Pavel said. “Military grade, it has to be; nothing else would work against our CI. Someone’s trying to kill the ship.”
“We have to warn father,” Lucio said.
“How?”
“The netsats.”
“But we can’t access the ship’s network and get a lnc.”
“Not through the contact bulbs, but if we physically open a transmitter unit, we can rig up an emergency circuit.”
“Let’s go.”
* * *
—
After five hours, the multi-terrain rover started driving over sand that glittered under the harsh noon sun. It was a coarse grain, which Ualana-Lyon presumed was some kind of quartz variant. Using his lnc to the netsats, he could actually follow their vehicle’s journey through the visual sensors, looking down on a bright speck tracking a serpentine path around the desert’s bulky outcrops. For the last thirty minutes, the dark brown rocks had been covered in a fluffy white marbling, as if they were extruding calcium carbonate. Like the sand, the tips twinkled in the sunlight.
“Is that rockrot?” he asked.
“Indeed, yes,” Iuntin-Detlef said. “These are mostly new fields we are tending here. The rock closer to our compound has been exhausted.”
“You make it sound like a farm crop,” Shoigu said.
“In a way it is,” Iuntin-Detlef agreed. “But out here, tending our crop mainly consists of clearing sand drifts away from the rockrot so it receives the full radiance of the sun.”
It wasn’t long before the outcrops they passed were a lot smaller, worn down into featureless nubs by the rockrot. Ualana-Lyon got the netsats to zoom out, revealing more and more of the desert around them. The patch of lighter sand they were traveling across was huge, some twenty kilometers across. Right at the center was a sharp-edged green circle with large ochre buildings dotted about—the Guillrameo compound.
They approached the imposing wall. Ualana-Lyon had been expecting another construction of the familiar blue-gray aerolite, but instead the wall was made from huge slabs of quarried rock.
“I love this place,” Liliana said. “A literal jewel in the desert. I’m sure you’ll like it, too.”
Ualana-Lyon didn’t even bother smiling at her. Five hours of making small talk with the wretched human had even exhausted his rider’s tolerance.
Dark metal doors twenty meters tall swung open to let them in.
“Welcome to the Guillrameo oasis,” Iuntin-Detlef announced proudly.
Ualana-Lyon had to admit it was impressive. The area contained inside the wall was a well-maintained garden, complete with small lakes fringed with palm trees. The difference from the bleak desert outside couldn’t be more pronounced.
Several of the ancient androids were tending the citrus groves, while family members walked along winding paths. It was all very tranquil.
The multi-terrain rover came to a halt on the parking lot outside an accommodation block. Its door opened, and Ualana-Lyon stepped out.
* * *
—
The Annoton’s life support ring was juddering as Lucio and Pavel pulled themselves quickly along the central access passageway. It was a loud grinding sound that followed them into the free-fall sections of the starship, unnerving both brothers. Neither was used to anything mechanical going wrong at such a fundamental level. Malfunctions simply weren’t part of life in the Crown Dominion. It didn’t help that over half of the secondary light strips had failed, leaving long sections of the passageway in eerie darkness.
“Here,” Lucio said as they reached a junction with five radial passageways. “This one. The ancillary equipment bay down here has a transmitter unit.”
“Are you sure?” his brother asked. “Wouldn’t we be better off in one of the primary sensor modules?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. Look, the support bay has to have something we can use to message father with. Come on!”
“If this doesn’t work, we’ll go straight into the surface slammer and ride it down to father. We’ll have to use minimum acceleration.”
“Do you think it’ll still work?”
“It’s military, so yes, I think it will.”
“Okay.”
They both kicked off and glided along the passageway.
“What is that?” Pavel asked in alarm as they passed through a lengthy dark section. There was something wrong with the passage up ahead, something he couldn’t quite make out. Both of them grabbed hand loops and stopped themselves just short of the light.
The cylindrical surface of the passageway was covered in a brown dendrite structure that had a sickly oil-rainbow shimmer. It looked so alien, kicking up an almost phobic reaction in Pavel’s brain. He instinctively didn’t want to go anywhere near the stuff. None of his father’s gifts could help with this moment.
“I don’t know,” Lucio whispered.
At first Pavel thought the dendrite was moving toward them like some strange multi-faceted serpent, then the image resolved properly in his head. It wasn’t sliding along the walls, it was growing.
“Back!”
Both of them twisted around. The illuminated section of the passageway behind them was now crisscrossed with strands of the same dendrite material. It looked like a net, which made them the prey.
Pavel couldn’t help it; he opened his mouth and screamed. A gossamer thread stroked against his cheek. It stung—a pain so sharp that it stunned him into silence. His hand swiped at it, trying to tear it off. The same pain lanced into his fingers. Something was coiling around a leg. He could hear Lucio yelling in terror and reached frantically for him. Their hands never met. Now even the weak secondary lighting was dwindling, blocked by the swelling dendrite. More lines of pain slithered across his face, and his sight ended. He could feel the agonizing strands worming their way past his lips into his mouth, then his nose, ears—
* * *
—
The stone walls of the oasis buildings were all covered in elaborate petroglyphs. Ualana-Lyon took his time studying them as he breathed in the fresh, dry air. Some were elegant forest scenes, while others were simple patterns. High up on the apartment block they’d arrived at he saw a frieze of faces that tickled some kind of memory, but it was almost a subconscious association.
Even with androids and modern carving tools, it must have taken years to cover every building like this. More like decades.
“May I?” he queried.
“Of course,” Iuntin-Detlef said. “We are somewhat proud of our environment. Buildings that we live in should have some of our essence instilled in them, or so we believe. Without that, they are nothing but empty shells in which to rest your head. We have made this place home.”
“Quite right,” Ualana-Lyon murmured in agreement.
He went over to the apartment block and ran his fingers delicately over the engravings. They were king peacocks, wings outstretched as if to rise from the center of a wild geometric starburst. It was a grainy surface, with minute glints of quartz.
Ohshit.
“Shoigu, come see this,” he said out loud. His neural connection was frantically signaling the netsats for a lnc. “Launch the surface slammer now. Right now. We need emergency extraction. Lucio? Pavel?”
“What is it, father?” Shoigu asked.
Ualana-Lyon gripped his son’s hand. “Activate your robe’s defenses,” he ordered through their neural connection. His own weapons were stirring in the sacs secreted within his body.
“Told you so,” Liliana said acerbically.
“Oh, dear.” Iuntin-Detlef sighed regretfully. “It was the sand, wasn’t it?”
Ualana-Lyon turned around with slow inevitability. He glared at his captor and gave a reluctant nod.
“You can’t dig an underground complex the size we have beneath us without getting rid of the spoil somewhere,” Iuntin-Detlef said. “The oasis wall and buildings used up some volume, but not nearly enough. So as you’ve realized, the sand outside is just crunched up stone from slabs we couldn’t use for construction.”
“Pavel, please!” But Ualana-Lyon’s lnc reported the netsats were no longer connected to the Annoton.
“I’m afraid your sons won’t be helping you, Lord Ualana-Lyon,” Liliana said. “The Annoton has been slowballed. Bekket warned us you were smart, and to take maximum precautions. How right he was.”
Ualana-Lyon stiffened at the use of his real name. Bekket! I was right all along, then, but this is so much worse than I ever imagined.
