The polyp bulged up at the centre, its apex thinning as it rose, becoming translucent. Red rawness showed beneath it, the crest of a stem as thick as a human leg which stretched right down into the core of the starships body. The tumescent apex split open, dribbling a thick gelatinous goo onto the corridor floor. Inside, the sphincter muscle at the top of the red stem dilated, looking remarkably similar to a waiting toothless mouth. The dark tube inside palpitated slowly.
Athene held up the bitek sustentator, a sphere five centimetres in diameter, flesh-purple, maintained at body temperature. According to the data core on the zero-tau pod it had been kept in, the zygote inside was female; it was also the one Sinon had fathered. She bent down and pushed it gently into the waiting orifice.
This child I name Syrinx.
The little sustentator globe was ingested with a quiet wet slurp. The sphincter lips closed, and the stem sank back down out of sight. Sinon patted her shoulder, and they gave each other a proud smile.
They will flourish together,Iasius said proudly.
Yes.
Athene walked on. There were another four zygotes left to initiate, and Romulus was growing larger outside.
The Saturn habitats were keening their regret at Iasius s call. Voidhawks throughout the solar system answered with pride and camaraderie; those that werent outbound with cargo abandoned their flights to flock around Romulus in anticipation.
Iasius curved gently round the non-rotational dock at the northern endcap. With her eyes closed, Athene let the affinity bond image from the voidhawks sensor blisters expand into her mind with superhuman clarity. Her visual reference of the habitat altered as the endcap loomed large beyond the rim of the starships hull. She saw the vast expanse of finely textured red-brown polyp as an approaching cliff face; one with four concentrically arrayed ledges, as if ripples had raced out from the axis in some distant time, only to be frozen as they peaked.
The voidhawk chased after the second ledge, two kilometres out from the axis, swooping round to match the habitats rotation. Adamist reaction-drive spaceships didnt have anything like the manoeuvrability necessary to land on the ledges, and they were reserved for voidhawks alone.
Iasius shot in over the edge, seeming to hover above the long rank of mushroomlike docking pedestals which protruded from the floor, before choosing a vacant one. For all its bulk, it alighted with the delicate grace of a hummingbird.
Athene and Sinon felt the gravity fade down to half a gee as the distortion field dissipated. She watched the big flat-tyred crew bus rolling slowly towards the bitek starship, elephant-snout airlock tube held upwards.
Come along,sinon urged, his mind dark with emotion. he touched her elbow, seeing all too plainly the wish to remain during the last flight.
She nodded her head reluctantly. Youre right, she said out loud.
Im sorry that doesnt make it any easier.
She gave him a tired smile and allowed him to lead her out of the lounge. The bus had arrived at the rim of the voidhawk. Its airlock tube lengthened, sliding over the upper hull surface to reach the crew toroid.
Sinon diverted his attention away from his wife to the flock of voidhawks matching pace with the ledge. There were over seventy waiting, latecomers rising into view as they left their crews behind on the other ledges. The emotional backwash from the waiting bitek starships was impossible to filter out, and he could feel his own blood singing in response.
It wasnt until he and Athene reached the passage to the airlock that he noticed an irregularity in the flock. Iasius obligingly focused on the starship in question.
Thats a blackhawk!sinon exclaimed.
Amidst the classic lens shapes it seemed oddly asymmetric, drawing the eye. A flattened teardrop, slightly asymmetric, with the upper hulls dorsal bulge fatter than that on the lower hull; from what he supposed was prow to stern it measured an easy hundred and thirty metres; the blue polyp hull was mottled with a tattered purple web pattern.
The larger size and various unorthodox configurations which set the blackhawks apart, their divergence from the voidhawk norm (some called it evolution), came about because of their captains requirement for greater power. Actually, improved combat performance was what they were after, Sinon thought acrimoniously. The price for that agility usually came in the form of a shorter lifespan.
That is the Udat,Iasius said equably. It is fast and powerful. A worthy aspirant.
Theres your answer, then,athene said, using affinitys singular-engagement mode so the rest of the crew were excluded from the exchange. She had a gleam in her eye as they paused by the airlocks inner hatch.
Sinon pulled a sour face, then shrugged and walked off down the tube to the bus, giving her the final moment alone with her ship.
There was a hum in the corridor she had never heard before, a resonance coming from Iasius s excitement. When she put her fingers to the sleek composite wall there was nothing, no tremor or vibration. Perhaps it was only in her mind. She turned and looked back into the toroid, the familiar confined corridors and lounges. Their whole world.
Goodbye, she whispered.
I will love you always.
The crew bus trundled back over the ledge towards the cliff of polyp, nuzzling up to a metal airlock set into the base. Iasius laughed uproariously across the communal affinity band; it could feel the ten eggs inside its body, glowing with vitality, their urgency to be born. Without warning it streaked away from the pedestal, straight towards the waiting flock of its cousins. They scattered in delighted alarm.
This time there was no counter-acceleration force required for the crew toroid, no protection for fragile humans. No artificial safety limits. Iasius curved sharply, pulling an easy nine gees, then flattened its trajectory to fly between the endcap and the giant metal arm of the counter-rotating dock. Weak pearl-white sunlight fell on the hull as it moved out of the ledges shadow. Saturn lay ahead, the razor-sharp line of the rings bisecting it cleanly. The bitek starship headed in for the planet-swathing streamers of ice crystals and primitive molecules at twelve gees, stray dust-motes and particles brushed smoothly aside by the distortion fields bow wave. Enthusiastic voidhawks raced after it, looking more and more like a stippled comets tail as they emerged into the light.
In the crew quarters, metal was buckling under its new and enormous weight. Empty lounges and corridors were filled with drawn-out creaking sounds, composite furniture was splintering, collapsing onto the floor, each fresh fragment hitting with the force of a hammer blow, leaving a deep indentation. The cabins and galley were awash with water that squirted from broken pipes, strange ripples quivered across the surface as Iasius performed minute course adjustments.
Iasius entered the rings, optical-band perception degrading rapidly as the blizzard raging outside the hull thickened. It curved round again, bending its path in the direction which the ring particles orbited, but always at an angle, always heading inwards towards the massive presence of the gas giant. It was a glorious game, dodging the larger chunks, the dagger fragments of ice which glittered so coldly, the frosted boulders, sable-black chunks of near-pure carbon. The bitek starship soared around them all, spiralling, diving, swooping in huge loops, heedless of the stress, of the toll its frenzy extracted from the precious patterning cells. Energy was free, coursing through the ring. Cosmic radiation, the planets undulating magnetic flux, the doughty gusts of solar wind; Iasius swept it all in with the distortion field, concentrating it into an abundant coherent stream which the patterning cells absorbed and redirected.