The Night's Dawn Trilogy (5 page)

Go on,
she told the starship.
Call for them.

All right.

She smiled for both of them at the eagerness in the tone.

Iasius
called. Opening its affinity full, projecting a wordless shout of joy and sorrow over a spherical zone thirty astronomical
units in radius. Calling for mates.

Like all voidhawks,
Iasius
was a creature of deep space, unable to operate close to the confines of a strong gravity field. It had a lenticular shape,
measuring one hundred and ten metres in diameter, thirty metres deep at the centre. The hull was a tough polyp, midnight blue
in colour, its outer layer gradually boiling away in the vacuum, replaced by new cells growing up from the mitosis layer.
Internally, twenty per cent of its mass was given over to specialist organs—nutrient reserve bladders, heart pumps supplying
the vast capillary network, and neuron cells—all packaged together neatly within a cylindrical chamber at the centre of the
body. The remaining eighty per cent of its bulk was made up from a solid honeycomb of energy patterning cells which generated
the spatial distortion field it used for both propulsion modes. It was those cells which were decaying in ever larger quantities.
Like human neurons they were unable to regenerate effectively, which dictated the starship’s life expectancy. Voidhawks rarely
saw out more than a hundred and ten years.

Both the upper and lower hull surfaces had a wide circular groove halfway out from the middle, which the mechanical systems
were slotted into. The lower hull groove was fitted mainly with cradles for cargo-pods, the circle of folded titanium struts
interrupted only by a few sealed ancillary systems modules. Crew quarters nestled in the upper hull groove, a chrome-silver
toroid equipped with lounges, cabins, a small hangar for the atmospheric flyer, fusion generators, fuel, life-support units.
Human essentials.

Athene walked around the toroid’s central corridor one last time. Her current husband, Sinon, accompanied her as she performed
her final sacrosanct duty: initiating the children who would grow up to be the captains of the next generation. There were
ten of them, zygotes, Athene’s ova fertilized with sperm from her three husbands and two dear lovers. They had been waiting
in zero-tau from the moment of conception, protected from entropy, ready for this day.

Sinon had provided the sperm for only one child. But walking beside her, he found he held no resentment. He was from the original
hundred families; several of his ancestors had been captains, as well as two of his half-siblings; for just one of his own
children to be given the privilege was honour enough.

The corridor had a hexagonal cross-section, its surface made out of a smooth pale-green composite that glowed from within.
Athene and Sinon walked at the head of the silent procession of the seven-strong crew, air whirring softly from overhead grilles
the only sound. They came to a section of the corridor where the composite strip of the lower wall angle merged seamlessly
with the hull, revealing an oval patch of the dark blue polyp. Athene stopped before it.

This egg I name
Oenone
,
Iasius
said.

The polyp bulged up at the centre, its apex thinning as it rose, becoming translucent. Red rawness showed beneath it, the
crest of a stem as thick as a human leg which stretched right down into the core of the starship’s body. The tumescent apex
split open, dribbling a thick gelatinous goo onto the corridor floor. Inside, the sphincter muscle at the top of the red stem
dilated, looking remarkably similar to a waiting toothless mouth. The dark tube inside palpitated slowly.

Athene held up the bitek sustentator, a sphere five centimetres in diameter, flesh-purple, maintained at body temperature.
According to the data core on the zero-tau pod it had been kept in, the zygote inside was female; it was also the one Sinon
had fathered. She bent down and pushed it gently into the waiting orifice.

This child I name Syrinx.

The little sustentator globe was ingested with a quiet wet slurp. The sphincter lips closed, and the stem sank back down out
of sight. Sinon patted her shoulder, and they gave each other a proud smile.

They will flourish together,
Iasius
said proudly.

Yes.

Athene walked on. There were another four zygotes left to initiate, and Romulus was growing larger outside.

The Saturn habitats were keening their regret at
Iasius
’s call. Voidhawks throughout the solar system answered with pride and camaraderie; those that weren’t outbound with cargo
abandoned their flights to flock around Romulus in anticipation.

Iasius
curved gently round the non-rotational dock at the northern endcap. With her eyes closed, Athene let the affinity bond image
from the voidhawk’s sensor blisters expand into her mind with superhuman clarity. Her visual reference of the habitat altered
as the endcap loomed large beyond the rim of the starship’s hull. She saw the vast expanse of finely textured red-brown polyp
as an approaching cliff face; one with four concentrically arrayed ledges, as if ripples had raced out from the axis in some
distant time, only to be frozen as they peaked.

The voidhawk chased after the second ledge, two kilometres out from the axis, swooping round to match the habitat’s rotation.
Adamist reaction-drive spaceships didn’t have anything like the manoeuvrability necessary to land on the ledges, and they
were reserved for voidhawks alone.

Iasius
shot in over the edge, seeming to hover above the long rank of mushroomlike docking pedestals which protruded from the floor,
before choosing a vacant one. For all its bulk, it alighted with the delicate grace of a hummingbird.

Athene and Sinon felt the gravity fade down to half a gee as the distortion field dissipated. She watched the big flattyred
crew bus rolling slowly towards the bitek starship, elephant-snout airlock tube held upwards.

Come along,
Sinon urged, his mind dark with emotion. He touched her elbow, seeing all too plainly the wish to remain during the last
flight.

She nodded her head reluctantly. “You’re right,” she said out loud.

I’m sorry that doesn’t make it any easier.

She gave him a tired smile and allowed him to lead her out of the lounge. The bus had arrived at the rim of the void-hawk.
Its airlock tube lengthened, sliding over the upper hull surface to reach the crew toroid.

Sinon diverted his attention away from his wife to the flock of voidhawks matching pace with the ledge. There were over seventy
waiting, latecomers rising into view as they left their crews behind on the other ledges. The emotional backwash from the
waiting bitek starships was impossible to filter out, and he could feel his own blood singing in response.

It wasn’t until he and Athene reached the passage to the airlock that he noticed an irregularity in the flock.
Iasius
obligingly focused on the starship in question.

That’s a blackhawk!
Sinon exclaimed.

Amidst the classic lens shapes it seemed oddly asymmetric, drawing the eye. A flattened teardrop, slightly asymmetric, with
the upper hull’s dorsal bulge fatter than that on the lower hull; from what he supposed was prow to stern it measured an easy
hundred and thirty metres; the blue polyp hull was mottled with a tattered purple web pattern.

The larger size and various unorthodox configurations which set the blackhawks apart, their divergence from the voidhawk norm
(some called it evolution), came about because of their captains’ requirement for greater power. Actually, improved combat
performance was what they were after, Sinon thought acrimoniously. The price for that agility usually came in the form of
a shorter lifespan.

That is the
Udat
,
Iasius
said equably.
It is fast and powerful. A worthy aspirant.

There’s your answer, then,
Athene said, using affinity’s singular-engagement mode so the rest of the crew were excluded from the exchange. She had a
gleam in her eye as they paused by the airlock’s inner hatch.

Sinon pulled a sour face, then shrugged and walked off down the tube to the bus, giving her the final moment alone with her
ship.

There was a hum in the corridor she had never heard before, a resonance coming from
Iasius
’s excitement. When she put her fingers to the sleek composite wall there was nothing, no tremor or vibration. Perhaps it
was only in her mind. She turned and looked back into the toroid, the familiar confined corridors and lounges. Their whole
world. “Goodbye,” she whispered.

I will love you always.

The crew bus trundled back over the ledge towards the cliff of polyp, nuzzling up to a metal airlock set into the base.
Iasius
laughed uproariously across the communal affinity band; it could feel the ten eggs inside its body, glowing with vitality,
their urgency to be born. Without warning it streaked away from the pedestal, straight towards the waiting flock of its cousins.
They scattered in delighted alarm.

This time there was no counter-acceleration force required for the crew toroid, no protection for fragile humans. No artificial
safety limits.
Iasius
curved sharply, pulling an easy nine gees, then flattened its trajectory to fly between the endcap and the giant metal arm
of the counter-rotating dock. Weak pearl-white sunlight fell on the hull as it moved out of the ledge’s shadow. Saturn lay
ahead, the razor-sharp line of the rings bisecting it cleanly. The bitek starship headed in for the planet-swathing streamers
of ice crystals and primitive molecules at twelve gees, stray dust-motes and particles brushed smoothly aside by the distortion
field’s bow wave. Enthusiastic voidhawks raced after it, looking more and more like a stippled comet’s tail as they emerged
into the light.

In the crew quarters, metal was buckling under its new and enormous weight. Empty lounges and corridors were filled with drawn-out
creaking sounds, composite furniture was splintering, collapsing onto the floor, each fresh fragment hitting with the force
of a hammer blow, leaving a deep indentation. The cabins and galley were awash with water that squirted from broken pipes,
strange ripples quivered across the surface as
Iasius
performed minute course adjustments.

Iasius
entered the rings, optical-band perception degrading rapidly as the blizzard raging outside the hull thickened. It curved
round again, bending its path in the direction which the ring particles orbited, but always at an angle, always heading inwards
towards the massive presence of the gas giant. It was a glorious game, dodging the larger chunks, the dagger fragments of
ice which glittered so coldly, the frosted boulders, sable-black chunks of near-pure carbon. The bitek starship soared around
them all, spiralling, diving, swooping in huge loops, heedless of the stress, of the toll its frenzy extracted from the precious
patterning cells. Energy was free, coursing through the ring. Cosmic radiation, the planet’s undulating magnetic flux, the
doughty gusts of solar wind;
Iasius
swept it all in with the distortion field, concentrating it into an abundant coherent stream which the patterning cells absorbed
and redirected.

By the time it reached the Encke division the power surplus was enough to energize the first egg.
Iasius
let out a shrill cry of triumph. The other voidhawks responded. They had followed tenaciously, striving to match the giddy
helter-skelter route
Iasius
had flown, boring down the passage it had broken through the ring mass, desperately deflecting the whirling particles tossed
about by its wake. The leader of the flock kept changing, none could equal the speed, nor match the carefree audacity; often
they were caught out by the savage turns, overshooting, blundering about in a squall of undisturbed particles. It was a test
of skill as well as power. Even luck played a part. Luck was a trait worth inheriting.

When
Iasius
called the first time,
Hyale
was the closest, a mere two hundred kilometres behind. It surged forward, and
Iasius
relented, slowing fractionally, holding a straight course. They rendezvoused,
Hyale
sliding in to hold position ten metres away, their hulls overlapping perfectly. Ring particles skidded round them like snow
from a ski blade.

Hyale
began to impart its compositional pattern through their affinity bond, a software DNA flowing into
Iasius
with a sense of near orgasmic glory.
Iasius
incorporated the
Hyale
’s structural format into the vast energy squirt it discharged into the first egg.

The egg,
Acetes
, awoke in a blaze of wonder and exhilaration. Alive with racing currents of power, every cell charged with rapture and purpose
and the urge to burst into immediate growth.

Iasius
filled space with its glee.

Acetes
found itself propelled out into the naked vacuum. Shattered fragments of
Iasius
’s hull were spinning away, a dark red hole set in midnight blue receding at a bewildering speed.

Free!
the egg sang.
I’m free!

A huge dark bulk hung above it. Forces it could sense but couldn’t understand were slowing its wild tumbling. The universe
seemed to be composed entirely of tiny splinters of matter pervaded by glowing energy bands. Voidhawks flashed past at frightening
velocities.

Yes, you are free,
Hyale
said.
I bid you welcome to life.

What is this place? What am I? Why can’t I move like you?
Acetes
struggled to make sense of the scraps of knowledge fluttering around its racing mind,
Iasius
’s final gift.