FALAHA'S JOURNEY: A Spacegirl's Account in Three Movements

Episode #45

Eyuran and Baro listened carefully, without interrupting me, as I shared my death experience with them. Well, not exactly all of it, only the part of our sad 'birth', save for private moments between our Baali 'parents', and the two encounters with the living—my mom and another, unknown entity.

When I finished, both men had forgotten to breathe. I was sure both understood well the scale of our troubles. Understanding, however, didn't make things simple and easy.

I described to them the basic plan of an Enclave-type vessel from my memory. Though this one was immense, Bradoh would need only twenty seconds to shift across its whole diameter at one quarter of light speed. It's moving through the interiors that was a huge, time-consuming problem. The ship was extremely complex to navigate inside, but Enclaves usually had five zones—the closer to the Core, the less maze-like a compartmental complexity the zone had. None of the zones, save for the Core, had any specifically assigned functionality—it could be anything, anywhere the owners decided it needed to be. This is where the separation line from the basic plan went, so the whole thing had the potential to let anyone unfamiliar with the highly detailed layout wander inside it for a long time, if not forever. And even if it was Dorgu's ship, during countless years the vessel could have been restructured and re-engineered to fit the owner's fresh ideas and suit the needs of numerous and ever-growing members of his family—the family that could have taken the form of a whole armada of enemy ships by now, thus adding to our troubles. We could also try following the path Kané had been taken along into the Enclave, yet I wasn't sure I could recognize and show the exact position of the entry point from the hull side. In any case, without precise details my information wasn't any good to Eyuran. But at least we knew which way was 'down'.

"Eyu, can you do a complex one?" I asked.

"I know the General DIVE Theory and the details regarding a rescuer's job during the dive—yet having the Eater was quite an issue for me and Dad. So I've never even done simple dive geometry before. Dad had it easier around energy sources, but with my body it was pretty pointless to learn how to pilot a DIVE-craft," he replied. "But I have a feeling I've used it within these two days, I just can't recall it. I wasn't exactly myself."

"Were there any records of its latest use in the system?" Baro asked.

Eyuran shook his head. "No. That's the strangest part."

"Hmm—anyway, while you might have the knowledge in your soma, which is frequently hard to access for incomplete soma types, it's never too late to learn," Baro said. "I'll help you with the dive geometry." As Baro turned to me, Eyuran smiled—unknowingly the Medan had scratched his soft spot for mastering new things. "As well as with some analytical thought in logic of the situation, and possibly beyond the technology involved. This is as much as I can do in my state." Our eyes met and there was a curious spark in his—he was interested! "If I can rely on your almost first-hand experience of that culture, Falaha, I think I can be of use, though, to be honest, I have never faced such a massive task before."

My knowledge wasn't in any way complete as I'd had only a brief glimpse of Kané's memory. But it was better than nothing.

"Perfect," I said. "I suggest taking a look what's behind the walls here first."

"Tubes?" Both men proposed simultaneously.

"Tubes."

As it turned out, my suspicions were correct—the Medan wasn't an engineer, not your average engineer, at least. And thus my small crew acquired an Intelligence Officer: a science, technology and weapons analyst, to be precise. But even then I had a feeling he wasn't telling us everything about himself, which was expected of a man with I2 clearance. Or maybe he just thought it was unimportant now.