The Engines of Dawn (35 page)

The Avatka said, "We are… we
were
a race of traders. We told them that if they would spare us, we would find other life-forms upon which they could feed. We would put them in our sublight ships and use them as Engines."

"The destruction of the
Annette Haven"
Professor Holcombe said. "That was a
feeding.
Wasn't it."

"That, and all of the other ship disasters," the Avatka said. "The Onesci eat slowly, molecule by molecule, with every trans-space transit. But some become impatient over time and will swallow a ship whole, killing themselves in the process."

Ben had been standing very close to Julia, not wanting ever to leave her side.

Julia asked, "What happened to my little bear?"

The Avatka said, "You have an expression, 'miner's canary.' Your people used canaries a long time ago to warn coal miners of dangerous gases. I had been watching your bear for some time. It was weakening. The Engine that powered our vessel was about to gorge itself. I recognized the Ennui in the little bear."

"I thought so!" Ben said. "It is real!"

"The Ennui's real?" George Clock asked.

"Oh, yes," the Avatka said. "We have no word in our lexicon for it, but you do. A century and a half ago your people had sensed that the spirit was draining from humanity, but didn't know why."

Here, Albert Holcombe spoke. "But it only happened to that part of the Human Community who had frequently traveled to other star systems in ships powered by these…
engines."

"The Ennui," the Avatka said, "is the cumulative effect in your population of the feeding Onesci."

"What about
this
world?" Bobby Gessner asked.

The Avatka said, "The Onesci, on their own, had found this world centuries ago. They settled here to feed. The
vehenta,
their only natural enemy, came later. They are beings, parasites, really, who follow the Onesci wherever they go. They breed in the wake trails the Onesci leave."

"Wakesprites?" Jim Vees said.
"Vehenta
are the wakesprites?"

"Yes," the Avatka said. "Some planets still have surviving
vehenta
who prowl the skies for Onesci. But they will feed on any advanced life-form. They can live for hundreds of years."

Bobby Gessner came over and said, "We made a map of several nearby star systems that have these
'vehenta'
moving about in their atmosphere. It looked as if they were part of a 'wave' coming from the inner part of the galaxy."

"That was the path the Onesci were taking when we met, when we were able to stop them, reason with them," the Avatka said.

"So you killed
our
Engine, on Eos," Julia said.

"My colleagues and I, the other Avatkas, decided that the Onesci as a race had to be stopped. Too many beings have been consumed and you were about to join their ranks."

"Then what was Ixion Smith listening to?" Bobby Gessner asked. "In trans-space, I mean."

"The feeding songs of Onesci as they moved through the Alley," the Avatka said. "The songs are very pleasurable. Hypnotic. They lure you in subtly."

The students who belonged to the Ainge Church would have heard those songs. In the Ainge Church, baptism, confirmation, and marriage all come with the privilege of putting on an Auditor's helmet and sitting at an Auditor's station, just like the one Ixion Smith himself devised.

"Trans-space is just an energy matrix," the Avatka said. "It's not God-not my God, not your God. Your man Smith brought down monsters upon your kind by accidentally hailing one of our ships." The Avatka had to gasp for air and his one lung could be heard bubbling: he was drowning from his internal injuries. "You helped us postpone our own demise. We fed you to them and let your Ainge lead the way."

"But why are you doing this now?" Ben asked. "Why us?"

"Because of the thirty-eight civilizations we have fed to the Onesci, only yours has had the intellectual ability to challenge their rule. But to do that, you needed to develop your own stardrive engines and you needed to be rid of the Ennui-your slow death at their hands. Once you become yourselves again, you will be unstoppable, if what I've read from your histories is correct. But first you have to stop
them."

With that the Avatka fell silent. A moment later he was dead.

41

Cutter Rausch lost track of the charges he and the rest of the crew of Eos University would face when they returned to the worlds of the Human Community, to say nothing of the charges they would face if they made the long journey to Wolfe-Langaard 4 to stand before the Enamorati court. Either way, their careers, if not their very lives, were at an end.

Rausch therefore decided that Cleddman needed to be at the helm if they were to survive the threat of the warships escorting the new Engine into orbit above Kiilmist 5. Only he could get them out of this. Toward that end, Rausch faked an emergency call to the guard watching over Cleddman's apartment and immediately summoned the captain to ShipCom.

Rausch apologized for the blood and dead bodies in the Arena, and for the bound and gagged Auditors against a far wall.

"I had to take some rather drastic action to secure ShipCom," Rausch said. "It involved swords and these … people."

"So I see," Cleddman said, lifting his boot up and inspecting the goo the blood had become.

The main wall of ShipCom was active with its many screens. Cleddman considered these. One held a magnified view of the Engine escort, which was still several thousand miles behind them.

"The escort will match our orbit in less than three hours," Rausch told the captain. "But that's assuming they will still want to perform their insertion ceremony."

"I don't recall them ever using warships in their
Sada-vaaka
ceremonies," Cleddman said. "Where are our planetside people?"

"Four gondolas are nearly in orbit now," Rausch said. "But we've lost contact with archaeology. There's a hell of a storm down there blocking radio transmission. The sixth gondola is going to try to make contact with them, to see what the story is."

"Good," Cleddman said. "Now, where is Fontenot?"

"Campus security have turned off their com/pagers," Rausch informed the captain. "But we have been tracking them visually through the ship with transit-portal video cameras."

"Fontenot's smart enough not to use the transit portals to take over the ship."

"He isn't. But portals are on every floor and we've trained the cameras to scan for any sign of their movement."

"Very good."

"Fontenot's people are physically securing the ship, closing off the student commons, isolating the dorms and faculty apartments. Mr. Arendall, though, has so far kept Fontenot's people away from the physical plant."

Cleddman nodded at the report. "If I know Lewis Arendall, he'll keep the ship's systems on-line for as long as possible."

Rausch nodded. "If Fontenot's going to take over the ship, he'll have to do it floor by floor by hand using his own lock-code overrides. It will take him a while, but when he's done, he'll be the only man able to open them when all this is over."

"Where's Fontenot himself?"

Lisa Benn said, "We think he's with the Auditors. There's a lot of coded radio traffic going back and forth from there."

"So you're keeping the com lines open," Cleddman said.

"Have to," Rausch told him flatly. "We don't know if any of our friends, whoever they may be, would need to use the system. Unfortunately, Fontenot has as much access to it as anyone."

"I see." Cleddman pondered the screens before them.

Rausch said, "Captain, there's one other thing. The Hollingsdale deck is apparently abandoned. We've recorded no traffic from that location in the last two hours. Didn't you say that Fontenot was going to use it to take control of the ship?"

Cleddman thought about this. He then pondered the gagged Auditors and the four sliced-up bodies underfoot. "For all we don't know about the Enamorati compound on every Engine-run vessel, we also don't know about the Auditor facilities. We've historically granted them the same privacy as the Enamorati. It's possible they might be able to run the ship from there. A new Engine, after all, will only be a few yards away."

Lisa Benn bent over her board. "Captain, Mr. Rausch," she said. "I'm picking up a coded message sequence. It's being sent to us from the pilot vessel in the Enamorati escort fleet."

"Coded?" Rausch said, looking at Captain Cleddman. "Why would they send a message to us coded?"

"Because it's not meant for us," the captain said.

Lisa Benn nodded. "They're trying to send it in a tightbeam either to the Enamorati chambers or to the Auditors. The signal keeps wavering and they can't get a lock onto it."

TeeCee Spooner, sitting at her station, perked up. "Sir! I've got Lewis Arendall on the line. It's a priority call."

ArendalTs visage appeared on one of the side screens on the monitoring wall. He'd apparently been roused from sleep.
"Captain, we're showing a diversion of power from the main electrical grid. The tap had your release codes. My people and I were wondering if you knew anything about this."

"Where's it coming from?" Cleddman asked.

Arendall reported,
"Amidships. It's then dispersed along secondary lines to six areas, all amidships."

Cleddman gave Rausch a worried look. The people who ran the ship's physical plant were supposed to be politically neutral. They were never to take sides in university affairs. Their calling was to keep the ship's functions going, no matter what.

"Lewis, we've got a situation," Cleddman said. "The taps are coming from Eve Silbarton and a number of engineers who are installing an experimental stardrive which has to be anchored to the ship's structural core. Eve says that the power use will take about ten percent from your system. That's probably what your instruments are showing."

Arendall stared.
"We've heard rumors,"
he said.

"Rumors," Cleddman said.

"That we've been handed over to the Enamorati for trial and that we 'II be heading to the Enamorati home worlds as soon as the Engine is installed."

"That's true," Cleddman said. "Mr. Fontenot is acting on orders from President Porter and is in the process of taking over the ship.

Porter was given authority to do this by the H.C. Council and Mason Hildebrandt himself."

Rausch added, "But the authorization letter was bogus. No such letter arrived because no such request went out undamaged. All of our messages have been going out damaged since we emerged from trans-space. It's a ploy by Porter and campus security to remain on the Enamorati's good side."

Cleddman had to use the right words if they were going to include Mr. Arendall among their allies on board the ship. He said, "Lewis, President Porter believes that some of our students
may
have violated the Enamorati Compact, and he wants to put us before an Enamorati court, as a show of good faith. We are to head to Wolfe-Langaard 4 as soon as the new Engine is in place."

Mr. Arendall, large and perhaps overly muscular, looked as if there was no room in his body for an original thought. But he had one of the most practical brains on the ship. He said,
"I take it that you don't want to do this thing that President Porter wants."

The Cloudman took a deep breath. "Not by a long shot. Eve Silbarton and her team performed several field tests of her new stardrive at our last port of call. Remember those gravity perturbations you registered? They were from one of those engines being tested on the far side of the beta moon of Ala Tule 4. But I knew nothing about her work until she told me the other day."

"Captain,"
Arendall said, "/
can't produce the power to run a stardrive engine. We don't even know how the Enamorati do it."

"These new units work on entirely different principles. Eve's assured me that you can easily provide enough energy for her drive systems. And if you want to know the truth, my goal in all this is to get Eve's systems on-line and get us the hell away from the Enamorati escort now approaching us."

"Which appears to be an
armed
escort," Cutter Rausch added. "Take a look."

Rausch immediately transferred the screen with the approaching warships to Mr. Arendall's board.

"Ix,"
Arendall said, passing a hand over his burr-cut hair.

Rausch then said, "I'm sure you've noticed that for the last several hours we've been using our rail gun. We've been sending out bullets informing the H.C. about what has been happening to us out here. Whatever happens to us, the rest of the Alley is going to know at the very least that Enamorati have warships."

Cleddman added, "Lewis, I believe that we are soon to be taken captive. We have proof the Enamorati have been lying to us. They have soldiers, they have swords, and they have warships. I'm sorry, but you're going to have to take sides on this one. I've got forty-five hundred people to think of. I need to know. Are you in or out?"

Arendall had apparently been thinking the matter through as they were talking.
"I'm in. But you'd better find Fontenot and his people. They've got guns."

"I know," Cleddman said. "Meanwhile, I want you to block yourselves off. If he gets into the physical plant, it's all over."

"Don't worry about me. Just find Fontenot."

"We'll do our best," Cleddman said.

The image of Lewis Arendall faded from the screen, and Cleddman turned to Cutter Rausch. "Get word to all the gondolas. I want them to get back to Eos as soon as they can. When that happens, notify me. I'm keeping my com/pager open, just in case."

"What about Fontenot?" Rausch asked.

"He's the wild card," Cleddman admitted. "But if he hasn't taken the physical plant, we're still in the game."

"How are we going to fight the Enamorati, Captain?" Lisa Benn asked. The other ShipCom personnel looked on.