They went plunging past the Eighth.
They were sat on the floor by Djan Seriy, who stood. The feet or hands of their suits all touched.
“Home proper, we’re passing, sir,” Holse said to Ferbin when Djan Seriy relayed this information.
Ferbin heard him over some very loud but still soothing music he was having the suit play him. He had closed his eyes earlier but still could not keep out the unspeakable purple glow; then he’d thought to ask the suit to block it, which it did. He shivered with disgust every time he thought of that ghastly purple mass of Aultridian stuff stuck cloyingly all around them, infusing them with its hideous smell. He didn’t reply to Holse.
They kept going, flashing beneath their home level.
The Aultridian vessel didn’t even start to slow until it had fallen to a point level with the top of the atmosphere covering what had been the Deldeyn’s lands.
Still slowing gradually, it fell past the floor of that level too, coming to a halt adjacent to the matrix of Filigree immediately beneath. It jostled itself sideways, the floor tipping and the whole craft shuddering. Djan Seriy, one hand attached to a patch on the scendship’s wall near the door, was controlling its actions. Her knees flexed and her whole body moved with what looked like intensely practised ease as the craft shook and juddered beneath her. Then they felt the craft steady before starting to move smartly sideways and up, gradually levelling off.
“Moving into the Filigree now,” Hippinse told Ferbin and Holse.
“The Aultridia have spotted all is not well with one of their scendships,” Djan Seriy told them, sounding distracted.
“You mean this one, ma’am?” Holse asked.
“Mm-hmm.”
“They’re following us,” Hippinse confirmed.
“What?” Ferbin squeaked. He was imagining being captured and peeled from his suit by Aultridia.
“Precautionary,” Hippinse said, unworried. “They’ll try and block us off somewhere ahead too, once we’ve narrowed our options a bit, but we’ll be gone by then. Don’t worry.”
“If you say so, sir,” Holse said, though he did not sound unworried.
“This kind of thing happens all the time,” Hippinse reassured them. “Scendships have brains just smart enough to fool themselves. They take off on their own sometimes, or people get into them and borrow them for unauthorised excursions. There are separate safety systems that still prevent collisions so it isn’t a catastrophe when a scendship moves without orders; more of a nuisance.”
“Oh really?” Ferbin said tartly. “You are an expert on our homeworld now, are you?”
“Certainly am,” Hippinse said happily. “The ship and I have the best original specification overview, secondary structure plans, accrued morphology mappings, full geo, hydro, aero, bio and data system models and all the latest full-spectrum updates available. Right now I know more about Sursamen than the Nariscene do, and they know almost everything.”
“What do you know they don’t?” Holse asked.
“A few details the Oct and Aultridia haven’t told them.” Hippinse laughed. “They’ll find out eventually but they don’t know yet. I do.”
“Such as?” Ferbin asked.
“Well, where we’re going,” Hippinse said. “There’s an inordinate amount of Oct interest in these Falls. And the Aultridia are getting curious too. High degree of convergence; intriguing.” The avatoid sounded both bemused and fascinated. “Now
“By the way, Mr Hippinse,” Holse said, “is it really all right to wet oneself in these things?”
“Absolutely!” Hippinse said, as though Holse had proposed a toast. “All gets used. Feel free.”
Ferbin rolled his eyes, though he was glad that Holse, probably, could not see.
“Oh, that’s better…”
“We’re here,” Djan Seriy said.
Ferbin had fallen asleep. The suit seemed to have reduced the volume of the music it had been playing; it swelled again now as he woke up. He told it to stop. They were still surrounded by the horrible purple glow.
“Good navigating,” Hippinse said.
“Thank you,” Djan Seriy replied.
“A drop, then?”
“So it would appear,” Anaplian agreed. “Brother, Mr Holse; we were unable to make the landfall we wanted to. Too many Aultridian scendships trying to block us and too many doors closed off.” She glanced at Hippinse, who had a blank expression on his face and seemed to have lost his earlier good humour. “Plus something alarmingly capable of procedural corruption and instruction manipulation appears to be loose in the data systems of this part of the world,” she added. She grinned in what was probably meant to be an encouraging manner. “So instead we’ve transited to another Tower, ascended it and then made off into its Filigree and come to a dead end; we’re in an Oversquare level so there’s no onward connections.”
“A dead end?” Ferbin said. Were they never to be released from this cloying purple filth?
“Yes. So we have to drop.”
“Drop?”
“Walk this way,” Djan Seriy said, turning. The scendship’s door rolled up, revealing darkness. They all got to their feet, pushed through the thick-feeling curtain at the entrance and were suddenly free of the glutinous purple stuff filling the scendship’s interior. Ferbin looked down at his arms, chest and legs, expecting to see some of the ghastly material still adhering to him but there was, happily, no trace. He doubted they’d shrugged off the notorious smell so easily.
They were standing on a narrow platform lit only by the purple glare from behind; the wall above curved up and over them, following the shape of the scendship’s hull. Djan Seriy looked at the bulge on her thigh. The drone Turminder Xuss detached itself and floated up to the dark line where the door had buried itself in the ship’s hull.
It twisted itself slowly into the material as though it was no more substantial than the glowing purple mass beneath. Long hanging strands of hull and other material worked their way out along the little machine’s body and drooped down, swaying. The drone — rosily glowing folds of light pulsing about its body — finished by stationing itself midway between the scendship’s hull and the wall of the chamber and floating there for a moment. There was an alarming groaning noise and the hull of the ship around the hole bulged inwards by about a hand’s span, exactly as though an invisible sphere a metre across was being pressed into it. The wall directly opposite made creaking, popping noises too.
“Try closing
Djan Seriy nodded. “This way.”
They passed through a small door into the closed-off end of the channel the scendship travelled within; a twenty-metre-diameter concavity at whose centre, up some complicated steps that were more like handrails, another small round door was set. They entered it and found themselves inside a spherical space three metres or so across, struggling to stand up all at once on its bowled floor. Djan Seriy closed the door they’d come through and pointed to a similar one set straight across from it.
“That one leads to the outside. That’s where we drop from. One at a time. Me first; Hippinse last.”
“This ‘drop’, ma’am…” Holse said.
“We’re fourteen hundred kilometres above the Deldeyn province of Sull,” Anaplian told him. “We ambient- drop, not using AG, through nearly a thousand klicks of near-vacuum and then hit the atmosphere. Then it’s an assisted glide to the Hyeng-zhar, again leaving suit antigravity off; it could show.” She looked at Ferbin and Holse. “You don’t have to do a thing; your suits will take care of everything. Just enjoy the view. We’re still in comms blackout, but don’t forget you can always talk to your suit if you need to ask any questions about what’s going on. Okay? Let’s go.”
There had not — Ferbin reflected as his sister swung open the circular door — really been enough time
