The Consuming Fire (The Interdependency #2)(75)

“Nadashe Nohamapetan’s secret bank accounts. As in, the ones she never expected anyone ever to find. They are very interesting.”

“How so?”

“Because as of twelve hours ago, Your Majesty, someone was moving money around in them.”





Chapter

20

“Are we ready for this?” Gennety Hanton asked as he looked around the bridge of the Auvergne. The ship was about exit the Flow shoal to Hub.

If there was to be any ambush it would be the moment the ship translated into regular space-time. Ships had no momentum coming out of the Flow; the Auvergne would be sitting in space, a motionless target for any missiles, beam weapons or harsh language thrown its way. Marce’s plan to send a drone with dummy information had been followed, but whether it was successful was another story entirely. The ad hoc crew of the Auvergne was about to find out.

“I have my beam array on and ready to fire on anything that moves,” Chenevert said.

Hanton nodded at this. “I’ll be looking for incoming trouble over here.”

“Thank you, Dr. Hanton,” Chenevert replied. “Be on a particular lookout for missiles.”

Marce thought that was a kind choice on Chenevert’s part. Chenevert was a computer and effectively the ship itself. He needed a human to inform him of incoming objects about as much as a parent working on a project needs a toddler to hand over tools. But Chenevert understood that Hanton needed to do something with himself in the moment and was happy to oblige him.

It made Marce wonder again who and what Chenevert had been in his non-computer, non–sentient ship days. In his conversations with Chenevert during the eight-day return trip, the virtual human had been garrulously vague on the subject, preferring to redirect Marce into discussions of the Interdependency instead. It was a subject Chenevert found endlessly fascinating, and to be fair, inasmuch as he and his ragtag company had basically dragooned Chenevert and the Auvergne, Marce thought it was only fair to get his virtual friend as much up to speed as he could.

What little Marce could get out of Chenevert in terms of this own personal specifics was that he’d been very wealthy, although whether from his own efforts or through family money was left unspecified; that one day he and a couple hundred of his closest friends decided to take a pleasure cruise on the Auvergne, along with a substantial percentage of each of their personal fortunes and possessions; and on that day they suddenly found themselves obliged to depart from Chenevert’s home world in something of a rush, via the Flow, and eventually found themselves in Dalasyslan space, unable to return.

“You were refugees,” Marce had suggested.

“We preferred to think of ourselves as temporary expatriates,” Chenevert said. “We had every intention of returning one day, but then physics happened.”

“The Flow stream you used to get to Dalasysla collapsed.”

“Yes.” Chenevert frowned at this, and Marce was reminded again at how good the simulation of him being an actual human was. “We could have used having you around then, Lord Marce. You seem to understand all of this better than anyone else I’ve known.”

“There was someone else who knew it as well as I do,” Marce said.

“Of course. I’m very sorry about your friend Dr. Roynold, Lord Marce. I know you grieve for her. And for the entire lost crew of the Bransid.”

Marce nodded. “And you, Monsieur Chenevert? Do you miss the people who came with you on your journey?”

“Yes, certainly, although it was so long ago now.”

“Not that long ago for you. You said you slept through the last three hundred years.”

“Mostly slept, yes. A tiny bit of my brain woke up every now and again to check on the ship and keep it running. It’s the virtual person equivalent of waking up briefly to scratch your nose when you have an itch, and then falling right back to sleep.”

“Still.”

“Yes. Well, the thing was, Lord Marce, when I left my fellow shipmates they had abandoned me. In the best way, because they had found a way to revivify Dalasysla, and to invite the few remaining natives of the system to come live with them. They left me because they had a better place to be, and for that reason I was happy to see them go.”

“How were they able to do that? Get Dalasysla running again? It had been dead for centuries by that time.”

Chenevert shook his head. “Not dead, Lord Marce. Dormant. Whatever collapse befell the habitat, the problem was not in its physical plant. Oh, the habitat had been damaged, and it had been scavenged, by the time we got to it. When I say my people got Dalasysla running again, you should understand it was on a limited basis, relative to what it was before. But there was enough there that it could easily house my crew and the thousand or so Dalasyslans that still existed, spread across smaller habitats and ships.”

“It’s amazing that there were any at all for you to find. For people to survive that long isolation.”

“Yes, remarkable. But also depressing, isn’t it, Lord Marce? There were once millions of Dalasyslans, living rich and comfortable lives, and that number was winnowed down to a mere few hanging on by the proverbial fingernails. Not because they were cut off from the rest of the universe but because in the first few critical years after being cut off, they lost their collective minds. Or enough of them did that the others had to spend precious time dealing with them, and not the larger situation.”