15: Time to Move

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Careful to stay far away enough to avoid being bitten, I looked up at the fruits on Morlin’s tree. They were vaguely luminous in the rapidly fading daylight, casting a slight red glow through the bone-white branches and onto the black rotting plant material around the tree.

I had tried to calculate just how fast the drake population would grow, but the drakes were so vague and qualified their answers with so many ‘it depends’ caveats that even estimating is a fool’s errand. Kerlin had told me about the ‘half rule’, the idea that under normal conditions, approximately half of a drake population is expected to reach the next level of maturity. Half of Morlin’s children are expected to survive to be born, half of those are expected to mature into men, half of those are expected to mature into women and about half of those women are expected to successfully plant core trees, half of which are expected to survive long enough to make more children. Which he then immediately amended by pointing out that the need for population growth and mostly uncolonised planet meant that most of the women would probably plant core trees and have the assistance necessary to make them fruit, but also that far less of Morlin’s children were expected to survive each stage in the first place, because the core tree was so absurdly young and bearing already. How many more? Unknown. How long before the other core trees would bear fruit, and how many of those would survive? Also unknown.

(I had asked after the women who wouldn’t plant core trees, or wouldn’t have them survive, and had been told that women without their own core trees tended to wander in search of others and sneak in and bite their fruits, which apparently gave them an extra shot of nutrients and made them potentially stronger while also injecting some of the rogue woman’s cells into the embryo and making it a chimera. These cells may or may not become part of the chimera’s reproductive system, so it was a toss-up as to whether the mother or the invader was the real genetic winner in this. Mothers didn’t like it because it tended to kill the embryos fairly often. Drake reproduction is fucked up. Kate would love this.)

I suppose I couldn’t blame them for being so vague. They didn’t know much more about the planet than I did. This forest was a good place for core trees, but what was the nutrient cycling like? Would it stay good for core trees, or deplete quickly? Was it a unique place, or were there many such places on the planet? Was there some radical ecological or climate cycle that would kill the trees after a few decades, forcing all children to be born by young trees? Would the aljik in orbit spot the nearby nest and obliterate it and quite probably this part of the forest alongside it? There were so many variables.

I was pondering this when I noticed something behind Morin’s tree. Something in the sky. Something bright.

“Is that the aljik bombardment?” I asked. Nobody listened, because everyone else had already noticed it and was springing into action. Well, panicking. Which was really about the only action available to us. It’s not like we had a bunker to hide in; if that was coming to obliterate the nearby nest, there was nothing we could do but hope the impact wasn’t enough to kill us. Even if it destroyed the core trees, if enough men survived and we could get to another fertile area soon enough, or even just deeper into the forest provided the damn thing didn’t burn down, we…

Hang on, that wasn’t my problem. My problem was getting back into space.

Around me, drakes poured into the clearing, tails and wings flicking commands. Someone was ordered to go check out the falling thing on the telescope. Others were ordered to go and check on all the core trees and report back, as if that would do anything. Mostly, we just panicked.

Either everything was over or it wasn’t. And all we could do was wait and see.

——————————–

The men and I all ended up gathering around the telescope, because, well. Where else would we go. The telescope was a hacked-together mess of scrounged spaceship parts that made me distantly angry just looking at it, because whatever drake had put this together was a better engineer than me, so if the Princess had been able to get her head out of her arse for five seconds and look at the assets she had on board the Stardancer she never would have needed to abduct me in the first place. But noooo, the drakes do atil things, and none of the atil could do external ship repairs! Idiot.

The drake on the telescope, whose name was Yinna, watched the falling debris carefully. And silently.

Stuff takes a really, really long time to fall down from space.

It seemed like forever before he said, “Whatever it is, it’s not heading for the aljik nest.”

“It’s not?” Kerlin asked sharply. “It’s not an orbital bombardment?”

“Not unless they’ve seen something else out there that looks like an aljik nest. It’s going to land… no, it can’t be orbital bombardment. They can’t have mistaken anything for a nest.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s going to land in the water.”

Oh dear fucking god no. Not the ocean again.

“It’ll make a pretty big wave,” Kerlin said. “Will that be a danger?”

“It’s hard to say anything for sure with unknown ecology, but if you mean the wave physically flooding our labyrinth, no, I don’t think so.”

Relief and joy swamped the crowd. As they started to disperse to tell the women with their core trees the good news, I asked Yinna, “What about the aljik nest? Will that be flooded?”

“Hmm? No idea. I don’t know enough about their nest to – oh. No; it’ll be fine.”

That last part sounded like he’d acquired new information. “How do you know?”

“Because it just deployed a sail to slow its descent speed.”

“It what?!” I dashed to the telescope and tried to see for myself, but of course the whole thing had been set up to accommodate a drake and I couldn’t get my head at a good angle. I could make out something falling that might be a large sheet, or might not. I’d have to take Yinna’s word for it.

“It has a parachute?” I asked Yinna as he reclaimed the telescope. “You’re sure?”

“Yes. What are you worried about? What’s good news. We don’t want big waves.”

“It means that it’s meant to land safely. So it’s probably a ship. An aljik ship.”

“Yes. Here to kill our former captain, I have no doubt.”

“And all the other aljik!”

“A lot of them will probably die, yes. The tahl especially. The survivors will integrate back into the Empire and, most importantly, the ships will leave this planet in peace and we can expand safely without having to worry about being obliterated from above. That’s a good thing; what are you so upset about?”

About losing friends, partly. About more conflict, partly, although if I stayed here in the forest then I probably wouldn’t see any of it. But mostly, I was hit with the sudden, sharp, important knowledge that that had to be a ship landing, there was no reason to safely drop anything else, and if it was a ship landing then presumably it was one that was designed to take off again. And it would; I would make sure of it.

And when it did, I would be on it.

——————————

Things were both clearer and foggier without Charlie in the nest.

Many of the gaps in my memory had been patched over, as missing memories often are, by inferences and second hand stories, to the point where I had a fairly clear idea of everything that was going on. I remembered how to be a dohl, how to live in an aljik nest, well enough that the idiosyncrasies of this one bothered me less and less every day. And without the distraction of a human template confusing me, I thought I could make that work again, thought I could regain the certainty I used to have in my dohl form, when I hadn’t known anything better.

And I could, physically. I was very, very good at being a dohl. I knew that the Princess was my princess was security. There was some uncertainty with the regency fight with the Faceless Queen still up in the air, but the conflict with Charlie had resolved to everyone’s satisfaction, with her choosing to leave peacefully and declining to take anyone with her. For as long as the Faceless Queen was unattainable, peace and certainty reigned once more. Physically, I could fit in perfectly.

Emotionally, things were different. I couldn’t forget being human, and it made being a dohl feel like an affectation. Well, technically every form I take is an affectation, but there is genuine affectation and then there’s lying. And this felt like lying. Like I was working not to be, but to convince the nest that I was. Was that feeling new, now that I had tried out a better form? Or had it always been there, and this human habit of introspection was showing it to me for the first time?

I hadn’t considered going with Charlie when she’d left. I’d only just found the nest again; turning around and leaving hadn’t even seemed like an option. But maybe I should have. Maybe I should’ve gone out despite her insistence on leaving alone and learned more. Maybe I should go out now, and scour the planet for something that fits even more than humanity, and leave all of this chaos behind.

But it was too late for that. It was half a day too late for that. Because half a day ago, something had begun falling from the sky. And once it was clear that it was geared with a parachute for a safe landing, it was obvious what it had to be.

Orbital bombardments don’t deploy parachutes for a safe landing. Accidental space debris doesn’t employ parachutes for a safe landing. Resupplies do, but nobody up there would want to resupply us.

“We must prepare for invasion,” the Princess announced to us dohl, stating the obvious. “There are no backup positions to retreat to. This is our last and only stand.”

“They touched down,” Kit said. “They didn’t destroy us from space, but they’re too close for it to be a coincidence. There’s only one reason to touch down and fight us on the ground.”

“There’s something that they want to recover without destroying,” I said, completing the thought. I pointedly did not mention the Crown Jewel by name, even though we all knew about it. “That might give us a negotiating position. A way to save your life.”

“Unlikely,” she said. “But it might give them pause in certain situations. We can use its existence as a weak shield, perhaps, if we are tactical. It’s already given us a chance by making this a ground assault instead of a bombardment.”

There was a moment of silence, in which everybody carefully avoided mentioning the fact that they were still perfectly capable of bombarding us from space if a ground assault failed. But what could we do, other than fight bravely for as long as we were able?

“So then. Let’s discuss how to use the things we have to the best advantage that we can manage.”

————————

This is dangerous, my drake friends had advised me. This is unnecessary. You could stay safe, here, and let the aljik fight it out. What do you hope to achieve, getting involved? The Princess’ forces will most likely kill you on sight. The Queen’s definitely will, when they realise what you are.

They were right. I could stay with them. I could stay safe. I could stay here forever, and let the aljik problem solve itself.

Except for one tiny issue with that reasoning – I couldn’t stay here forever.

I had a planet to get home to. I had a family to get home to. And that ship was the only way out. Failure was fatal, and failure was surely certain if I went back to the nest – but failure was even more certain if I stayed with the drakes. And that failure was every bit as fatal; it would just take several more years for the fatality to reach me. If I’d die on this planet either way, why not die trying? I’d cheated death multiple times before.

They recalibrated my shoulder device for me one last time, making it perfect. They helped me fashion armour for my forearms out of aljik chitin, which I thought was a bit grim (look at me, wearing corpses) but would certainly pass muster better than metal from wreckage; metal might be considered ‘cheating’, for what I had in mind. We pooled what we knew about the aljik, went over the details again and again, planned my best strategy for success. And they gave me one final gift, a last resort option, hidden in my belt and under my new armour.

You can stay here, they told me one last time as we said our goodbyes. You’d be safe here.

And I told them, one last time, that that wasn’t an option.

Everything I’d put on hold while survival was primary and escape was impossible was once again the most important thing in the world, and I was no more able to make choices than somebody driving into a headlong collision with a truck was. I could make strategic decisions, yes – swerve left, or swerve right – but those weren’t choices, those were simply attempting to maximise the chances of survival on a path already laid out. Heading for home was the only option, and all I was doing now was trying to survive the journey.

So I turned my back on my drake friends for what could very well be the last time, lifted the umbrella we’d fashioned to make me look like some kind of unidentified local fauna from space just in case anyone who knew what a human looked like happened to be watching the area, and headed towards the aljik nest.

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