I know they’ll always be ready to do anything for Sen, but I am hopeful that one day the shadow of House Renar won’t sit above them so strongly. They are improving. When it’s just Kaoren and me with them, they’re more inclined to show preferences in what to do each evening, and even Ys now asks questions if she can’t work out an answer using the interface. Though that’s becoming rarer – she’s formidably intelligent.
It’s so fun to watch Rye light up whenever Kaoren arrives, although today with a brief double-check to make sure that playing with cushions was allowed. It’s also pretty damn cool watching Kaoren’s response. I think the outright worship embarrasses him a little, but he really enjoys encouraging Rye, and says he has to keep resisting a temptation to show off for him.
It was a quiet day. Fourth had the morning free – or as free as they’re allowed to be when they’re the only squad on site – and Kaoren was in interface meetings, which is why I took the kids downstairs. In the afternoon we trained together. Since Halla is mildly injured, she was assigned to training with me, and Kaoren delighted Rye by having her include the kids in our training as well.
Isten Notra is coming to the Setari building tomorrow to discuss the conclusions she’s come to from all the data my projections and dreams have given her. Of course, she could just tell us that over the interface, but since it appears that Lira can observe me, Isten Notra is hoping to tell Lira what she thinks happened.
Which is a cruel, hard thing, but I completely agree with Isten Notra that only the truth will do.
Friday, October 24
Planet Drac
Last night’s attack on Oriath involved a full force of Cruzatch, plus a massive and attendants.
This time Taren and Kolaren technology ruled the day. Tare has tremendous problems fighting massives, because almost all their land surface is covered by buildings. Kolar has huge amounts of land surface, though all their cities are in two relatively small regions (parts of which are in permanent night, or permanent twilight, which leads to some great stories about things living in the dark), but while Kolar has difficulty dealing with small and medium Ionoth, with massives it usually just bombs the shit out of them.
KOTIS had expected exactly this tactic from the Cruzatch, and had been preparing launchers for missiles, which they promptly used to rain fiery destruction from the skies after checking that it wasn’t the type which could reflect missiles. The Cruzatch plainly don’t want to do any damage to this site, and hadn’t brought the massive through right on top of it – hoping no doubt to lure the Setari away into battle. So a nice, comprehensive victory (which still involved a lot of mopping up work for the Setari at Oriath, but hasn’t been nearly as fraught and injury-intensive).
This is by far the most protected of the malachite marble installations, and the shielding continues to delay further exploration. I’m still holding out hope for Our Secret Plan and How to Foil It, but I think it’s no longer critical to find it, because we have Isten Notra.
The meeting was down in the common room, giving Isten Notra a chance to view the smoky spots and gouges on the walls which the pinksuits haven’t quite found time to erase. The physical attendees were limited to Isten Notra, Tsur Selkie, me and Kaoren, with not even any of Isten Notra’s minions along, but the audience over the interface surprised me. Not just Pandora’s most senior bluesuits and the senior Setari representatives – Maze, Zee, Grif, Raiten, Inisar and Korinal – but about a dozen people whose names I had to look up: highest-echelon representatives from Tare and Kolar.
Isten Notra had brought one of the tablecloth screens with her, and started out by displaying a map of Muina with the platform towns highlighted.
"While much of what I’m about to discuss is not currently provable," she began, "we now have enough pieces that we are prepared to treat it as a working assumption. Given the increasing urgency of the situation, the recommendations I make today cannot wait for certainty, for the kind of expertise of those who built this system.
"The platform and Pillar system is a magnificent achievement, layering function upon function. The feed towns do not turn moonlight into aether, as you once suggested Caszandra. Instead they are drawing the substance of the Ena into real-space, and refining it – patterning it, if you will – so that it can be used as a power source: one so versatile it can even recognise and heal Muinans. The presence of the moon appears to be a control mechanism, to manage the volume produced, although there is some suggestion in the documentation recovered that the gravitational pull of the moon assists in safely thinning the wall between real-space and the Ena.
"The amount of aether needed to power the shielding dome at Kalasa, the teleportation platforms, and the Pillars is a fraction of the total aether produced by the feed towns, and the Pillars themselves appear to serve the dual function of stabilising the near region of deep-space and providing a storage channel for the excess aether. The whole system is integrated, and while it is likely those who built it intended to create further platforms, and to use the aether for other devices, maintaining a delicate balance would be paramount, for drawing and using the stuff of the Ena in real-space poses a monstrous risk, as we are all now well-aware."
Isten Notra glanced at the tablecloth screen and green dots appeared, showing the locations of the malachite marbles.
"Enter a parasite system," she said, sounding exactly like Agowla High’s headmistress that time half of Year 11 held a panty-shot scavenger hunt. "When the platform and Pillar network was activated, the wall between real-space and the Ena began to tear like a cloth under strain, despite all the calculations of its creators. This secondary system is most likely the cause."
She changed the display again, this time to a schematic of the site at Oriath – the outline of the underground rooms revealed by the scanners – and highlighted one in particular, at the very centre of facility.
"This room is the exact proportions of the aether-filled chamber Caszandra was trapped within, and projected for us." She zoomed in to the room, and though the scan was a little blurry, it was clear that the central pedestal was there. She replaced the image with a scan of the room I’d projected. "The diagrams covering the walls and ceiling appear to be symbolic references to the aether inflows – the platforms – and you will see from this projection that the aether is not simply contained in the room, but is slowly moving through it on spiralling paths from ceiling to floor. Scanner readings taken from the projection are not to be relied upon, but their measurement would suggest that the visible aether is merely leakage, and that a vast amount of aether is being channelled by this structure. It is probable that half, or even a majority of all the aether collected on Muina is being consumed by this room."
The image shifted to a close-up of the pedestal and the shrouded figure weighed down by tiny malachite marbles. I flinched a little inside, having no way of knowing whether Lira was watching, hating the thought of what was beneath that shroud.