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

Episode #55

A drop hits the surface of water, creating ripples that propagate outward. The feeling of space-time fold resonance remains, fluctuating within my soma. Another fierce drop creates more ripples. The monster halts, listening.

"Two DIVE-responses?" Father paused, concentrating on the situation around us, and then looked at me, saying, "We should hurry out of here while that thing is distracted. He won't be for long."

"Any of ours?" the Medan asked, helping him and Eyuran to accommodate unconscious Tagai into the cockpit. The Baal had weakened so much he'd slipped into a critical state, but his body continued the struggle to restore itself.

"No, the first one was an Enclave. Someone big has arrived and is following us, and it doesn't seem like it's trying to hide or sneak up on this ship."

An Enclave?! More of Dorgu's allies? "What about the second one?" I asked.

"I don't know. It disappeared," Father replied. "But it was more powerful than the first."

More powerful than an Enclave? Could there be some other vessel type lurking in our vicinity?

At this moment I felt more DIVE-responses, adding five hostile ships closely aligning around the one already following Dorgu's Enclave and dimming their power output, equalizing gravitational fields in a series of complex mergers—a process that brought a wave of motion sickness for the Medan until it all calmed down. Was this group what Father felt earlier?

Eyuran frowned. "The whole bunch acts like one big ship—the dive velocity of the total mass increased threefold!"

Father and I exchanged glances. Our time was cut short. One day. We had less than one day now... If this Enclave Armada ever got to Kan Diona, it would be reduced to stardust. And what was worse, more of our people were probably in those other ships... How were we going to get them out? Even Sibhainagh would not be enough.

The outcome of the whole 'war' now hung on the remaining thirty hours, probably less than that. No room for mistakes.

The Armada could easily get close unnoticed to anyone without Falaighnn—its EMR emission was being dissipated and folded into soma of the linked crew, like pretty anything else that could be detectable in space. Our ships were also stealth-capable, because Living Kernels' soma acts as a heat sink to transfer waste heat away from the ship without radiating it into space and either collect some for future use or dump it somewhere in a distant, safe region. Similarly, arcai-operated ships and some gear dispose of their waste heat through bubble-dive-bridge, a foam-like structure that forms around and covers the ship or machine in operation. Its fabric is so fine that it is undetectable by sensors unless you are too close to the object, and by people with most soma types, except the Eater and Falaighnn. However, both soma and the dive have their ranges of detection by Baali. And, of course, the gravity fields from the Cores... Without active DIVE there will be no stealth for the Nua ships; those are more vulnerable, either with gravity fields—even the weakest ones at the lowest DIVE output threshold, given sensitive enough instruments—or enough IR to be detectable at long range outside the dive fold.

We were also lucky to avoid any heat sensors inside the Enclave. A thick layer of scrap covered us in our hideout, and, during other times, we relied on our ability as nocturnal hunters. The Medan could appear nearly invisible in infrared as well.

Though Eyuran's excited blood was enough to trigger a critical rise in the ship's heat levels!

The only things that could hide from everyone and everything were Eyuran and his dad with their Bradohs. Since the Cores were inside their soma, even Bradohs' gravity fields were shielded from interactions with outside objects. It also enabled them to project gravitational effects into any place in space, and even use gravity as a weapon to some extent. Kan Diona probably had different type of camouflage as Bradohs were at risk of being taken by the enemy. Yet I wouldn't be surprised if Kan Diona had systems involving all the Eaters available, though that kind of soma is too hard to control and there's no guarantee the system will be fail-safe. If our Enclave can be hidden—for how long?