The Adventura was climbing in altitude, fleeing a nightmare. Ada was screaming at Salman to jump into Drift, and he was screaming where, how, what, and Ada was screaming to jump into Drift as if they were two deaf people, and all of a sudden, the Endymion had appeared in high orbit, right above them. Instead of presenting its immense flank, it was facing them, its maw loaded with asteroids, and it fired them like a shotgun toward the Phoebus.
Then the octopus Xeno that was dragging around in its bathtub had screamed a psychic order at Salman who had triggered an unknown Drift. The Adventura had vanished, only to reappear in the dance of the stars.
They were all panting, eyes hallucinated, haunted.
A few hours earlier, the terrifying Endymion had released a creature, a biological weapon, not far from the ship. When it rose up on its legs and sent a psychic message to Ada and Salman, saying very clearly in their language and their words: "you are going to die," they knew it was a weapon.
They had fired with a blaster and a Transient rifle, but even though the latter had pierced the thing straight through, it had leapt onto the ship. Salman, quick-witted, had fired the reactors at full power when the creature crawled on top: it had melted a little, and had been ejected a few hundred meters away. But with great bounds, it came back. It healed. That bastard was unkillable.
Salman had pushed the ship into the sky as it leapt, as if it had a grappling hook, toward it. He had told everyone to hold on while the thing grabbed the underside hull and tried to smash it apart: his plan was to crush it between the ship and the ground.
The impact was terrible, and Ada, Alpha, and the bathtub had lifted a few centimeters just before falling back to the floor-but that was not all.
The ground cracked. The Adventura suddenly fell through, as if it were a dry biscuit.
The fall lasted another three hundred meters, striking and breaking through several layers, until it hit a soft ground. A disgusting spongy noise-the thing being crushed.
They counted their wounds-Ada, breathless, her vagus nerve affected-some bruises, and Salman had switched on the floodlights that covered the whole Adventura, normally used when diving into sublime waters to impress wealthy tourists. No water here, but a spectacle as unique as it was unexpected.
Todolo, the planet with the random name, was a world with an unsuspected ecosystem. Vast hills of violet and blue moss, tall slender mushrooms, and everywhere, cathedrals of earth and plants that launched graceful ogives for hundreds of meters to support the cracked soil above, which let the sunlight filter through, drawing an infinite design on the ground. There was a whole world, of undulating slugs, butterflies and aerial plankton, living beneath the surface.
The Xenos here, colonists, had not built termite-wave mounds on a desolate land: they were the watchmen atop a planetary cathedral that hid the true treasure of this land. Already, curious sentient centipedes were approaching the ship.
Ada had taken a few steps into the violet moss. Salman, shaken, came at her side, saying:
- "You know the Crew of Captain Wau? It's the one where he says: 'Every planet has a secret.' Right?"
- "I'm from Antioch, but yes, I know it."
- "I'm from Antioch too, really. Long story. But I watched the smuggling episodes."
- "So, you know Gorylkin."
- "Gorylkin of a thousand tricks."
But a noise made them start. The hideous creature, though crushed by two-thirds, was regenerating. Salman approached and fired the blaster at point-blank range. It hurt it, but it healed, quickly. It was already lifting the ship.
Salman stepped back and a tentacle cracked like a whip, sending his rifle flying. He fell on his back. Ada fired, pierced it through, the thing didn't flinch. It opened a mouth wide enough to swallow a tank, and leapt at Salman. And then, a psychic cry, resonating for hundreds of kilometers: it was the octopus from the liquid planet, in its bathtub. It had spoken to all the Xenos here, who hurled themselves at the thing like a pack of wolves at a bison.
The creature was pushed aside and missed its leap. It devoured three, four, five; more still hurled themselves at it-from all sides, they arrived by the thousands like furious streams, threw themselves at the predator to form a ball, then a ball surrounded by layers, then finally the ball contracted… and the Xenos dispersed. Nothing remained: they had eaten it.
From the enormous hole caused by the fall of the Adventura, which was moreover growing by the minute, the ground breaking under its own weight, the star was masked by the sinister presence of the Endymion. They raised their heads. They saw. The radar confirmed. Salman jumped into the cockpit:
- "Gory… they're sending more. Gory… thousands."
- "Thousands like THAT?"
Salman had already launched the grapple and locked the doors.
- "More than that. The radar can't even count them anymore. Looks like millions."
- "And we flee?"
- "They're handling it pretty well, aren't they? Better than us."
- "Salman. I came because you resisted."
- "All right Gorylkin. Order me to land and I will. But I saw that thing. We're going to die. Are you ready? And your Xeno friends too?"
Gorylkin stared intently at Salman, as if holding him responsible for these words that recalled a form of cowardice she despised with anger but which nevertheless screamed inside her. The Abandoned declared to them in thought:
- "To live is surely the best way to resist."
Ada, half-conscious, made a gesture at Salman, which he interpreted as permission to leave. The ship gained altitude, as far as possible from the Endymion, while a rain of messengers of hell fell upon the cathedral-planet.
And then… they found themselves in Drift, then in the shadow of a gas giant filtering the intense light of a blue giant, transforming it into a permanent aurora borealis.
Ada, shaken, let herself fall onto one of the big sofas in the bar. Alpha stood near her. Salman joined her, pushing along their octopus friend who had saved their lives twice.
- "Where are we, Abandoned? she asked.
- A nameless system, without sentient life. Not too far from anywhere. I like the color of the star through the planet. And besides, you cannot hear the soft song of the dilation of its atmosphere.
- The HS has terrible biological weapons. I don't see how to defeat them. I even think that…"
Salman did not go on. But he meant, without finding the words, that he was broken. He would not be able to face one of those things on the ground without losing his composure.
- "You must not despair," said the Abandoned. "The Xenos killed one. That's a good sign. Human history is also made of terrible threats that seemed invincible. Think of the Black Plague, for instance."
- "I don't know what that is," admitted Ada.
- "I have collected many songs of despair from countless civilizations. One had found the way to extinguish suns, making them age and turning them into black holes. Another managed to stop the rotation of planets, annihilating their magnetosphere and leaving them vulnerable to solar winds. Those are undoubtedly far more formidable weapons. And yet they managed to overcome their trials. There is an essential element in life in the universe, my friends and fellow sufferers…"
His speech, laced with perfect idiomatic expressions of the HS, with a warmth and enthusiasm very human, was all the more incongruous as it came from nothing but a Xeno octopus in a bathtub.
- "…it is that life, when it exists, clings. It clings with the power of a thousand suns. It is inevitable. It flourishes. It is a positive tragedy: when it takes root, it will be there, always. It is often, in fact, the absence of life that intrigues me with time. As in this system. No life. When that happens, I tell myself: I do not see life but it is there, hidden, somewhere.
- Wise words, Xeno," said Salman. "You give me courage again."
- "That's cool and all," said Ada. "But the Aleph still has those things.
- Don't you have a mission, Ada?" asked the Abandoned.
- "Ada?" repeated Salman.
- "That's my other name. Yes. The Wau told me to unite all the Xenos."
She stretched out her body and slid from the sofa down to the floor.
- "Big deal. I have no idea how to do that. I bet he's living it up meanwhile, lounging in shitty diplomatic meetings.
- Well…," hesitated Salman, nodding his head wearily, "…it's easy. You go see a Xeno world, you make your proposal. And you move on to the next.
- And if they say no?
- You're the saint of the Xenos or what?
- Yeah but what if they say no?
- Well then you move on to the next."
The octopus, with small movements, managed to move the bathtub without spilling the liquid. He called out to Alpha:
- "And you, Alpha? Don't you have a mission too?"
Alpha stared at the Abandoned, but did not reply, in his eternal manner. Ada stood up and waved at them, turning her back:
- "I'm hitting the sack, see you."