Drednanth: A Tale of the Final Fall of Man Read Online Free PDF Page B

of the second platform was a great big aquatic smokeberry farm. Sally, Waffa, for your information, I’ve advised them that they’re not to bring any contraband on board and that anyone found smuggling will be left behind. They consented to this, and also to loading the juveniles first.”
    “Right,” Waffa said. “So that’s three youngsters and four more adults we can take this time.”
    “Actually,” Z-Lin said, and their lander peeled up past them and seared its way into the sky, “there’s one more wounded and a second guy who had some kind of eye-and-throat infection. That was from before the attack, but he’s in an isolation pod. Your eejits will be able to manhandle it into the rover bay and as long as you can secure it there, that should mean you can get five adults in this trip. The pod’s got its own safety webbing.”
    “Copy,” Sally acknowledged.
    They landed without incident. The roof was scarred and burned from the first lander’s arrival and departure, but seemed in no danger of giving way. It was designed as an emergency evacuation point, after all – flat for a wide stretch, before curving gently down into the dome itself. Waffa, Sally and the two eejits disembarked while Zeegon prepared their return flight plan.
    The access panel was already swinging open, contrary to the instructions Z-Lin had left behind, as the humans and eejits were hurrying across towards it. The roof had probably been slippery with spray and algae an hour ago, but the first landing had burned that away and left the surface nicely roughened. The hatch opened fully as Waffa approached, and a Bonshoon stuck its head out. It – she, Waffa realised once he got a bit closer – blinked wide green eyes, flicked her webbed ears once in an agitated gesture, and smoothly pushed the two-hundred-pound reinforced-crete hatch the rest of the way back with a careless movement of her upper left arm.
    Bonshooni were essentially the same as Molren and Blaren – tall; flat-topped heads; elongated eye teeth set in a wide, perpetually-smiling mouth; four arms – albeit generally a little on the thicker-bodied side. They were the same species, technically, although even more technically they were a subspecies and Waffa had heard that even interbreeding was becoming a thing of the past for the three races. Engineering, social psychology and medical science were all helping evolution along in that regard.
    “Hi,” he said, giving the Bonshoon woman a nod and a brief finger-flick salute.
    “I never thought I’d be so happy to see a human,” she said, in the too-loud voice of someone listening to music on a headset. Or with a stomach full of stimulant-narcotic berries. “I don’t mean that in a bad way, we lived across the corridor from some humans and they were really very nice.”
    “Were they the ones who got eaten by Fergunak trying to cut that gantry and save you all from drowning?” Sally stepped up.
    “No, those ones were stonk ers,” the Bonshoon said. “Always sleeping and complaining about needing to sleep, you humans and your sleeping, it’s like you’re unconscious half the time. You’re a female. That one’s a female,” she raised her voice still further and craned her neck to shout back into the hatch. “That last one you said was a female wasn’t a female. You can tell because of the mammaries, just like ours, except horizontal. And they’re made of fatty tissue instead of–”
    “Get your berry-beshitted arse on that lander,” Sally advised her.
    The Bonshoon woman hauled herself easily out of the hatch and straightened, an easy two feet – head, shoulders, shoulders – over the Chief Tactical Officer. Sally looked up at her calmly.
    The Bonshoon lowered her eyes.
    “Toss me up my bags,” she called down into the hatch, and a pair of large blocky cases flew up through the hole in rapid succession. Drug-addled or not, the evacuee caught each one deftly in a pair of hands, and turned back to Sally.