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

Episode #49

I had to rely on my memory to choose a dive-point from the path Orewen's Bradoh marked that wasn't far in dive-terms from the 'source', but far enough to avoid any contact with the native Enclave inhabitants. Of course, we could still run into someone inadvertently. Contrary to my expectations, I was better at orienting with the dive-map than before. Compared to Kané's piece, the recent memory imprint from the dream was kept vivid in my mind, meaning my interaction with Falaighnn was more stable and reliable now—I had made progress in these four days. I might even keep my promise to master my soma within twenty days.

Eyuran performed his current dive quite skillfully. I felt that his mind, body and Bradoh were approaching a nice synch. He became more confident with his conscious use of the machine and Bradoh's systems, along with the Eater, responded to it positively.

"Oh? Nice view! They sure have style for life," Baro said. "I was getting tired of the dark and dreadful scenery."

I followed his idea of running rabhain visuals in full-dimensional mode.

The place we landed in turned out to be a vast garden—a forest even—with lush and diverse vegetation, reminding me of our homeworld forest garden systems. We employed a forest gardening food production system alongside our traditional seasonal, semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle that had fully continued to this day. It wasn't a hard thing to keep with the majority of the population constantly being off-world and our total population of roughly two billion people. Now we were probably the least numerous nation in the Commonwealth.

"It's even more impressive with sounds," Eyuran said, tuning into the noise outside. He was right. The voices of the living forest were something I really missed—and this place was filled with life. Large and small animals, birds, insects... All of these sounds filled the cockpit, erasing the feeling of being in outer space. So that's the feeling you would get returning to a planet after a long space mission... It was genuinely amazing and alarming, if not terrifying, at the same time.

"Don't get too relaxed here," I replied, smiling. "Will we have breathing problems in this place?"

"No," Eyuran confirmed. "Atmosphere within life-sustaining range, radiation levels normal, slight near-surface wind, and it's quite warm and humid outside."

So we and the Baali could have had somewhat similar preferences after all. Not to forget that the life on our home planet was set up to influence the conditions with an expected outcome, even if the world started out a bit barren and inhospitable in its early stage.

This Enclave sector was enormous; much, much bigger than the Boneyard we came from. According to data it covered an area many times larger than the entire surface of Medas. The forest certainly was artificially created, but at this size it was meaningless to make anything less than a fully self-sustaining ecosystem. The tree tops pointed towards the deep blue sky with clouds soaring high above. It, too, was artificial, of course, and the light seemed to radiate from its every direction—there was no point light source, like the sla. Another large portion of clouds, dark and dense, gathered far away, and it looked like it was going to rain there. The area scan showed the Rainforest landscape wasn't flat either. There were mountains and hills, lakes and rivers too, maybe even seas.

As I completely immersed myself in the virtual experience of the place, the disturbing feeling acquired shape. To maintain the health and stability of this ecosystem an apex predator was necessary and, considering the bodies of the Baali and the fact that Shaamta leisurely ate one of his own kind, the Baali were carnivores. The ship owners were the top of the long food chains here and to feed the amounts of enemy population there were definitely more biomes like this in the ship.