The Night's Dawn Trilogy (427 page)

When Dariat and I disturbed it down in the Djerba, it’d broken into one of the starscraper’s nutrient fluid tubules. That
must be what it’s after. It’s feeding on your nutrient fluid.

An excellent hypothesis. However, it is not digesting the fluid, we would have been alerted to the loss of volume. And we
strongly doubt we have a compatible biochemistry.

It must need something the nutrients contain. Can you run an analysis on the fluid in the Djerba and the other starscrapers
where you have visitors squatting?

One moment.

Erentz felt the personality’s principal thought routines focusing on the vast network of tubules and conduits that wormed
through Valisk’s gigantic mitosis layer, probing for aberrations. A big part of the problem in locating any interference was
the way the nutrient fluid was pumped into and around the starscrapers. For a start there were many different types. Some
just fed the mitosis layer and the muscle membranes, others fed the environmental filter organs down in the basement floors.
Specialist fluids supplied the food synthesis organs in each apartment. And all of them underwent a long cycle from the digestive
and treatment organs of the southern endcap to the starscrapers and back again, taking several days to complete the circuit.
The entire process was autonomic, with the governing sub-routines and specialist monitoring cells inside the tubule walls
watching for known toxins seeping into the fluid. They weren’t looking for whatever kind of corruption was being inflicted
by the visitor.

With the bitek systems inside the starscrapers currently functioning erratically at best, the return flow was sluggish. Some
of the corpuscles had been naturally depleted by the organs they were intended to replenish, while a fair quantity returned
still carrying the fresh molecules and oxygen they were originally bound with. It made a review of the fluid that was emerging
from the starscrapers inordinately difficult. Eventually, though, the personality said:
We concur that the visitors are all somehow consuming the nutrient fluids. The proportion of dead corpuscles is approaching
ninety per cent in some tubules. The nature of the consumption is unclear. We can only conclude it is somehow connected with
their heat-sink ability; certainly there is no detectable physical digestion involved.

They’re ghouls,
she said.
Dinosaur-sized parasites. We’ve got to find some way of stopping them.

Fire is the only effective method we’ve discovered so far. It will take time to manufacture flame throwers.

It’ll have to be done. They’ll eat you alive otherwise.

Yes. Until we can build the appropriate weapons hardware, we’re shutting down the supply of nutrient fluid to the starscrapers.

Good idea.
She could see the trucks growing out of the scrub desert, trundling along the hard-packed dirt track.

Maybe that’ll stop them multiplying. If we can’t, the bastards will evolve into a plague.

______

Fifty light-years from Hesperi-LN,
Lady Mac
and the
Oenone
moved tentatively towards each other. Joshua had to use radar for the manoeuvre, while Syrinx utilized the voidhawk’s distortion
field. This deep in interstellar space there wasn’t enough starlight to illuminate a white gas-giant. Two small technological
artefacts coated in non-reflective foam were simply zones of greater darkness. The only clue to their existence an observer
might have had was when they occasionally eclipsed a distant star.

When Joshua did fire
Lady Mac
’s ion thrusters to lock attitude, Syrinx had to blink water from her eyes in reflex. The blue flames were completely dazzling
to
Oenone
’s deep space acclimatised optical sensor blisters. Both ships extended their airlock tubes and docked. Joshua led Alkad,
Peter, Liol, and Ashly into the voidhawk’s crew toroid. They’d come for a conference to review the data from Tanjuntic-RI
and determine the next stage of the flight. The two physicists were obviously required. Joshua had brought Ashly because of
his wide experience and delight in new and strange cultures, which might be useful. Liol’s presence was a little harder to
justify. Out of all of them, he’d seen the least of the universe. It was just that… Joshua was getting used to having him
around, someone he didn’t have to explain everything to. They thought the same way about the same things. That made Liol useful
back-up if he wanted to argue a point of contention.

Syrinx was waiting for them at the inner airlock hatch, a sly reminiscence in her mind at the last time Joshua had come aboard
when the two ships were docked. If she’d ever had any lingering doubts about him, they’d ended at Hesperi-LN. Now she was
glad it was he accompanying
Oenone
rather than some gruesomely efficient Confederation Navy captain from Meredith Saldana’s Deathkiss squadron.

She led the party into
Oenone
’s main lounge. The long compartment was furnished with plain autumn-red couches which matched the gentle curvature of the
walls. Glassfronted shelves displayed a large, varied collection of objects the crew had collected during their flights, ranging
from simple pebbles to antique carvings, even examples of unusual consumer products.

Monica was sitting with Samuel in one of the couches. Joshua took the one next to theirs, which put him opposite Renato, Oski,
and Kempster. Alkad and Peter sat with Parker, who gave his former colleague a simple polite greeting, as if he had no feelings
about her activities and motives. Joshua didn’t believe that for a second.

Syrinx claimed a seat next to Ruben, and smiled round. “Now we’re all here: Oski, did we retrieve everything from the arkship?”

The electronics specialist glanced at the slim processor block on the rosewood table in front of her. “Yes. We managed to
datavise all the files stored in the Planetary Habitation terminal into our processors. They’re all translated now. There’s
a lot of information on the five planets they colonized prior to Hesperi-LN.”

“And I’ve been accessing some of the files,” Monica said. “I was right, one of those planets was inhabited by a sentient species.
They were at an early industrial age.” She datavised the lounge’s processor. An AV lens on the ceiling came alive, projecting
a laser-like cone of light down into the compartment. A series of two dimensional pictures materialized at the base, just
above the decking. Aerial reconnaissance shots of grey, dirty towns, their brick and stone buildings sprawled across a landscape
of blue-green vegetation. They all had rows of factories clustering around the outskirts, tall drab chimneys squirting thick
smoke into the azure sky. Small vehicles moved along narrow stone roads, puffing out exhaust fumes. Cultivation was extensive,
with human-style checkerboard squares of fields cutting into forests and lapping against the steeper hills.

Tyrathca spaceplanes started to feature in the pictures, landing in the fields and meadows outside towns. Crowds of the four-armed
bipeds Monica had found in the archive display cube were shown running from armed soldier-caste Tyrathca. Close-ups of the
quirky alien buildings with their arched roofs. They didn’t have windows in the outer walls, instead a funnel-like light well
delivered illumination to the interior. The architectural arrangement was obvious: many of them had been struck by Tyrathca
missiles, exposing the burnt-out structure.

At some time, what passed as the xenocs’ army had rallied. Crude artillery pulled by lumbering eight-legged horse-analogue
beasts had been deployed against the spaceplanes. Masers reduced them to smouldering ruin.

“Jesus,” Joshua muttered when the file had finished. “A genuine invasion by bug-eyed space aliens. The whole thing looked
like snatches from a low budget adaptation of
The War of the Worlds
.”

“I’m afraid it was inevitable,” Parker said in regretful tones. “I’m beginning to learn the hard way just how rigidly individual
species stick to their own philosophies and laws, and how different that philosophy can be to ours.”

“They committed genocide,” Monica said, glaring at the old project director. “If there’s any of those xenocs left alive, they’ve
probably been enslaved. And you’re calling it a philosophy? For fuck’s sake!”

“We regard genocide as one of the worse crimes a person or government can commit,” Parker said. “The massive extermination
not only of life, but an entire way of living. Such an act repels us, and rightly so, because that’s the way we are. We have
emotion and empathy, some would say they govern us. I remind you the Tyrathca do not have these traits. The nearest they come
to emotion is the protectiveness they extend to their children and their clan. If you put a breeder caste into a human war
crimes court to answer for this atrocity it would never be able to understand what it was doing there. They cannot be judged
by our laws, because our laws are the embodiment of our civilization. We cannot condemn the Tyrathca, however much we despise
what they do. Human rights are precisely that: human.”

“They took over an entire planet, and you don’t think they’ve done anything wrong?”

“Of course they have done wrong. By our standards. And by our standards, so have the Kiint in continually refusing to give
us the solution to possession which we know they have. What are you proposing, that we file charges against Jobis as well?”

“I’m not talking about filing charges, I’m talking about the whole Tyrathca situation. We have to reconsider our mission in
view of what we’ve uncovered.”

“What do you mean, reconsider?” Joshua asked. “The original circumstances haven’t changed, and our goal certainly hasn’t.
Okay, the Tyrathca committed a terrible crime thousands of years ago. We personally, these two ships, can’t do anything about
that. But we do know to treat them more cautiously than before. When we get back, the Confederation Assembly can work out
what to do about the genocide.”

“If they’re allowed to take that initiative,” Monica said quietly. “I admit I’m angry about the genocide. But I’m more worried
about the present day implications.”

“How can that affect us?” Alkad asked. “And I speak of someone with direct experience of a genocide. What we’ve seen is awful,
yes. But it was a long time ago, and a long way off.”

“It affects us,” Monica said, “Because it shows us the Tyrathca in their true light. Consider, we’ve now established that
there were a thousand arkships.”

“One thousand two hundred and eight,” Renato said. “I rechecked the flightpath files.”

“Great, even worse,” Monica said. “Even assuming each of them was less successful than Tanjuntic-RI, say they only founded
a couple of colonies apiece, that gives them a population at least two to three times greater than the Confederation.”

“Spread over a huge volume of space,” Kempster said. “And not a cohesive political entity like our civilization.”

“Only because there’s been no need for them to achieve unity,” Monica said. “So far. Look, I’m in intelligence; Samuel and
I both spend our time assessing potential risk, it’s what we’re trained for. We catch problems in their embryonic stage. And
that’s the situation we have here. We’ve discovered a massive threat to the Confederation, in my opinion at least as dangerous
as possession.”

“Physically dangerous,” Samuel interjected. He smiled for the interruption. “I do concur with Monica that the Tyrathca present
us with an unexpected problem.”

“Crap,” Joshua said. “Look at what we did to them back at Hesperi-LN. You and the serjeants defeated an entire regiment of
the soldier caste. And
Lady Mac
flew circles round their ships. Confederation technology means we outclass them by an order of magnitude.”

“Not quite, Joshua,” Ashly said. The pilot was still gazing at the last picture projected by the AV lens, an apprehensive
expression on his face. “What Monica is saying is that we’ve stirred up the proverbial hornets’ nest. The potential of the
Tyrathca threat is a serious one. If all those thousands of colony worlds joined together, sheer numbers would present us
with a huge problem. And they do have Confederation technology, we sold them enough weapons in the past. They could retro-engineer
combat wasps if they had to.”

“You saw how they used them against
Lady Mac
,” Joshua said. “The Tyrathca can’t handle space warfare, they don’t have the right kind of neural wiring for that kind of
activity.”

“They could learn. Trial and error would improve them. Granted they’ll probably never be as good as us. But that’s where their
superior numbers come in, and it works against us. In the very long haul they could wear us down.”

“Why should they?” Liol asked. He spread his arms wide in appeal. “I mean, Christ, you’re sitting here talking like we’re
at war with them. Sure they’re narked we jumped into their system and raised a little hell. But this flight is totally deniable,
right? Nobody’s going to admit to sending us. You don’t commit your entire race to a conflict that will kill billions because
we beat up a chunk of wreckage they’d already abandoned.”

“We tend to overlook what they are so that we can maintain our preferred policy of diplomatic tolerance,” Samuel said. “We
like to see them as slightly simple, and stubborn; the ultimate big lummox. A species we can feel superior to, without them
ever being aware of our complacent condescension. While in fact, they are a species so aggressive and territorial that they
have evolved a soldier caste.
Evolved
one. We can barely comprehend the drive behind such a phenomena. Such a thing requires tens of millennia to achieve. Throughout
all that time on their homeworld the social climate maintained the pressures necessitating such a development. Their history
is a solid monoculture of conflict.”

“I still don’t see how that makes them a danger,” Liol persisted. “If anything it works in our favour. We provided the Hesperi-LN
Tyrathca with the ZTT drive over two hundred years ago. And what do they do with it? Do they rush off to contact their long-lost
relatives on the first five colony worlds? Bollocks. They’ve founded more colony worlds for themselves, so their immediate
relatives could benefit. They didn’t want to share that little technological gem with anybody else.”