“Well, not any good planets,” Rlinda said. “You should be thinking bigger. That money from Maria Ulio is not just a life-changing amount, it’s a Confederation-changing amount. You can form your own businesses, travel anywhere you want, give a bunch to charity. Be a philanthropist. Be everybody’s favorite friend. Maria collected so much profit from Ulio Station that just spending it is going to be your new full-time job.”
Terry blushed, which Xander found endearing. “Do you need any money, Rlinda? You helped us so much, and I’d like to pay you back. Can we maybe invest in Kett Shipping? Or help you build another restaurant?”
Rlinda gave a hearty laugh. “My dear boy, I may not be as fabulously rich as Maria was, but I’ve done quite well for myself. I could’ve retired ten times over, and I’ve already got restaurants on Relleker, Earth, and Theroc. Kett Shipping is doing just fine.” When they paused behind the Verne’s new main engines, she held out a stern finger. Her words echoed against the wide thruster cones. “That’s your money, Mr. Handon. A lot of money. Don’t do anything foolish, but you need to think seriously about what you want.”
Xander nodded. “Exactly what I’ve been telling him, but it hasn’t sunk in yet. I’ll keep Terry in check, just in case he goes overboard. If he wanted to have a whole asteroid carved into an orbiting likeness of his face, I’d stop him. Maybe.”
The other man flushed again. “I would never do that!”
“Of course you wouldn’t. So far, the only way you’ve splurged is by ordering more expensive meals and better wine.”
“Now that’s a good use of the money,” Rlinda said. “A wise investment.”
Xander grew serious. “I know where I mean to spend part of it, and this is one case where I truly intend to spare no expense. I’m going to dig into all available medical research. Terry’s had medical studies done on his spine, and nobody’s been able to help. With all of these resources now, there’s got to be a way we can give him the use of his legs again.”
Terry sounded exasperated. “I get along just fine.”
“‘Just fine’ doesn’t mean you can’t do better,” Xander said. “With all the doctors in the Confederation and the Ildiran Empire, someone will be able to make you walk again.”
“In zero gravity it doesn’t make any difference,” Terry insisted.
The two had talked around in circles many times; they’d even gotten into arguments, which resulted in memorable apologies. Xander had held his partner, explaining that he just wanted what was best for him.
“It’s just not the highest thing on my priority list,” Terry said.
Xander knew when to be quiet, and he decided to keep doing research on his own. He would find an answer and present it to Terry—and then he wouldn’t back down so easily.
Rlinda’s big brown eyes moistened as she looked from one man to the other. She said in a chastising tone, “You don’t have to hold out unreasonable hope, dear boy, but that doesn’t mean you should give up hope entirely.” She reached out with her big beefy arms and swept the two into a generous awkward embrace that made Xander stumble while Terry’s antigrav belt kept him balanced. OK remained silent, standing there like a long-suffering observer.
“You can fund medical research, you know,” Rlinda said. “You could buy any laboratory, create a think tank, found a university, devote countless hours to it—and you wouldn’t be the only one to benefit if you did find a cure. Think of the others who suffer from a similar condition.”
Xander knew that response might have more of an effect on Terry. He was a selfless person, didn’t like to be pampered, but all those other people …
Awkwardly, Terry looked at them and quickly changed the subject. “Look, I have been thinking big, and I have a new idea that’ll keep us happy. I think even Xander will be impressed.”
Xander raised his eyebrows, waiting.
Terry explained, “Maria founded her station, and countless thousands of traders relied on it over the years. Ulio Station was a pivotal center of commerce.”
“Until the Shana Rei obliterated it all,” Xander said.
“So, what’s to stop us from rebuilding Ulio? Or building a whole new trade center from scratch?” Terry smiled at them. “I’ve got the money, and it’s not a need that’ll go away anytime soon. At the moment, where do Roamer traders go? What happens to the ships that need massive repairs? And how do we deal with all the decommissioned wrecks just floating out there? They need a central place.”
Xander looked at Terry with building excitement. “Somebody’s going to start their own supply and repair depot … so why not us?”
Rlinda blinked. “With all the money in the Spiral Arm, you want to build your own … junkyard?”
“Repair yard,” Terry corrected. “And trading depot. Like Ulio Station, but better! Maria’s facility coalesced by accident once she started gathering wrecked ships after the Elemental War. We can make ours bigger and better—with a little bit of planning.”
Xander wanted to hug him. “That sounds exciting—and right up our alley. With my parents, our connections to Kett Shipping and all the Roamer clans … it’ll be perfect!”
Rlinda warned them, “Take it from me, running your own business is not as glamorous as it sounds. You’ll need help.”
“I don’t need anything glamorous,” Terry said. “But it sounds like fun, and it is something I want to do.” His lips quirked in a smile, as he gave Robb a nudge. “And I think I’ll be able to find some help.”
CHAPTER
7
SHAREEN FITZKELLUM
Emptier than emptiness. Blacker than blackness. The giant hole in the middle of the Fireheart nebula made Shareen uneasy.
“Hmm, this wasn’t at all what I expected when I activated the Big Ring test.” Kotto Okiah managed to sound both distracted and troubled. “Nevertheless, it is very interesting.”
“That’s one word for it,” Shareen said with a sigh. She didn’t point out that she and Howard had warned Kotto that something might go wrong with the experiment, because they had reviewed his calculations, against his orders.
Kotto was such a revered, even legendary, engineer that few Roamers ever questioned his assertions. By delving into his plans, Shareen and Howard hadn’t been trying to challenge him, just to understand what the project was all about. But the more they analyzed the plans, the more they suspected that even Kotto wasn’t sure of what he was doing. No wonder he hadn’t wanted his two assistants probing for details.
With everyone watching the test, eager to see a spectacular scientific breakthrough, the Big Ring had been brought to full power. The thrumming ring spun up, vibrating in space, draining the countless chained power blocks, thus creating a titanic electromagnetic tug-of-war. The Roamers got their spectacular result all right, and a giant rip in the universe to boot.
Since one of Kotto’s postulated outcomes for the Big Ring was to create a new interstellar transgate doorway, the scientist claimed the result was not entirely unexpected, but Shareen knew he was just waving his hands. Even if it worked, Station Chief Beren Alu, a practical businessman, quickly realized that any transit system requiring such a massive investment of time, money, and effort to open even one end was utterly unfeasible.
The Roamers might have indulged Kotto once, but they would not do so again … especially if the results of the Big Ring experiment turned disastrous.
His technical compy KR said, “We have been monitoring from a distance. The opening has not grown noticeably in the past two days.”
“So it’s stable,” Kotto mused. “That’s a good thing.”
GU, his other compy, added, “The boundaries are indistinct and difficult to measure, however.”
“We can all agree it’s a good thing the gap has not torn wider…” Howard said in his usual quiet voice. He sounded reticent.
“Definitely better than the collapse of the universe,” Shareen agreed. The void where the Big Ring had been was like a hole in the nebula, where stream
ers of wispy gas poured down into nowhere like the diaphanous veil of a colorful waterfall. It made her stomach queasy.
And she had thought solving the problem of the green priests and the trapped worldtrees seemed difficult.…
For two days, the tense Roamer workers at Fireheart Station had waited for answers. Completing the Big Ring had required so much effort that they felt adrift now that it was over. The complex had not yet gotten back to normal manufacturing levels, despite Chief Alu’s urging. Many workers had fled immediately after the Big Ring collapsed, afraid that the tear in the universe would swallow the nebula whole. Fortunately, that disaster hadn’t happened. Yet.
Garrison Reeves, one of the Roamer crew leaders, had established a conservative safety perimeter by placing warning buoys far from the edge of the void. A web of sensor packages provided instant telemetry closer in, but the sensors revealed no useful information. Long-distance sensors just weren’t able to do the job.
Very soon, Shareen knew, Kotto would be pressured to provide answers about what the void was and what dangers it posed, but so far he had not yet offered even preliminary hypotheses.
When Shareen and Howard first came to Fireheart Station to be his lab assistants, she had been excited to learn from such a famous figure, a genius in every sense of the word. Despite working at Fireheart for years, Kotto had produced nothing remarkable, until he invested his entire reputation in the Big Ring project.
Shareen was ambitious and intelligent, and Howard was eager to learn. When Kotto asked his new assistants to comb through old notes and half-finished projects, the two dove into the work with great enthusiasm. They solved problems that had stumped him for years, and Kotto had seemed pleased with their work, even a little astonished at what they figured out. Afterward, the great scientist had been even more determined to prove that his Big Ring would work.
That hadn’t turned out as planned. Shareen and Howard refrained from saying “I told you so”—they had not wanted to be right. Now, in the aftermath, Kotto didn’t tear his eyes from the view of the void. “I wonder where it goes.”
“We should send probes,” KR said. “That would be the best way to map the anomaly from within.”
“Naturally we’ll send probes,” Kotto said. “I was planning on it. That’s our next step.”
Chief Alu entered the observation deck to join them at the windowports. Alu was a small, wiry man with a long ponytail that extended down to the middle of his back. Long hair was not practical for anyone working in space, which was why Shareen kept hers short, but Alu was more of a manager than an actual space worker; he rarely donned an exosuit.
“I have to start reassigning work teams, Kotto,” he said with a long-suffering sigh. “By the Guiding Star, we need to get back to manufacturing power blocks and harvesting isotopes again. Fireheart will still provide the support you need to assess the results … but we’ve got to get to work. Fireheart Station isn’t a charity operation. I’m accountable to seventeen major clans.”
Kotto sounded baffled. “But I’m not stopping you from doing anything.”
Alu frowned. “We’ve been waiting to find out what that void is.”
“It is something very interesting, with a great deal of potential,” Kotto said firmly. “It may take some time to get the answers, but by all means don’t stop the business of Fireheart. Shareen and Howard here can help me collate the results. We’ll keep ourselves busy.”
The Station Chief looked confused but also relieved. “So, you think we can start isotope skimming again, stretch the films to make more power blocks? You’re sure the void doesn’t pose any danger?”
Kotto gave a dismissive wave. “Garrison Reeves marked out a safety perimeter. So long as your operations stay outside the boundary, you’ll be fine.”
Shareen turned away so no one would see her doubts. Kotto had no basis for making such a statement.
“All right, I’ll inform the teams. They’ll be glad to get Fireheart back to normal.” Alu glanced through the windowport at the black void slowly drinking the nebula gases. “Your experiment was a big setback for us, Kotto. By the Guiding Star, I’m amazed by what you accomplished here, and it was the greatest show I’ve ever seen … but once the experiment was over we were hoping to repurpose the superconducting magnets and strip out thousands of power blocks. Now they’ve all been sucked down the cosmic drain, gone forever. We have to start from scratch.”
The chief’s tone had only a hint of scolding, but Kotto did not seem bothered. “Starting over from scratch, Beren—that’s what Roamers do. Depending on what it turns out to be, that void could make Fireheart Station into a major tourist attraction.”
Shareen and Howard both shot a surprised glance at him.
The Station Chief blinked and let out a nervous chuckle. “I highly doubt that.”
“One never knows. Right now there are too many unanswered questions, and a lot of theoretical physicists will be on their way to have a look. Feel free to have your teams start generating income in the traditional way. As soon as I have answers for you, I’ll present them.”
Since it wasn’t her place to interject, Shareen waited for Alu to leave. When he was gone, she started to ask her questions, but Kotto rubbed his hands briskly together. “There, that’s the impetus we needed,” he said, as if trying to sound certain. “We have to find some answers—and that will involve asking more vigorous questions. We can’t just stand here at a distance and look. I’m going to take the next step.”
KR said, “We have standard probes ready for immediate deployment, Kotto Okiah. They will give us a first look into the gap.”
Kotto was impatient now. “Not good enough. Everything about my project was big and bold. We can’t be shy now—this calls for a scientific adventure!”
Unsettled, Shareen looked at Howard, but she could tell that Kotto had made up his mind.
“I’ll outfit a survey craft and prepare for an expedition,” he said. “I’m going to go inside that void.”
CHAPTER
8
OSIRA’H
The faeros were like a sunstorm in the Ildiran sky. Her father had gone up to face them.
The gathered people were terrified, their uncertainty thrumming through the thism. Osira’h could feel it. In the crowd, the human historian Anton Colicos frantically took notes. Nira wept, tears trickling down her emerald cheeks as she gazed up at the Mage-Imperator’s small figure high on the tower. “What if they incinerate him, just like Rusa’h?” she whispered.
Osira’h put a comforting arm around her mother. She felt a call of her own, though. She had been bred to command the elemental hydrogues, and her powers also extended to the faeros. She and her half-brothers and sisters—Nira’s children—were successes of the Dobro breeding program, just as the remaining misbreeds were the failures.
She knew she still had the strength within her.
Even from here, Osira’h felt her father struggling with the faeros, and knew that she had to help him. If he failed and the elemental beings careened across Mijistra, tens of thousands of Ildirans would be turned to ash. Breaking away from Nira, she grabbed the arms of her siblings Gale’nh and Muree’n standing next to her. “The Mage-Imperator needs us! I can connect with my father, and if you connect with me, we’ll be stronger together. Maybe strong enough.”
They pushed through the crowd, some of whom were too young to remember when the fireballs had scorched the city and laid waste to other Ildiran colony worlds. But many of them knew that horror and realized that their future balanced precariously on what the Mage-Imperator did next. Osira’h wouldn’t let him do it alone. “We have to hurry!”
Athletic Muree’n bounded ahead and cleared a way to the entrance arch. Tal Gale’nh, in his military uniform, wore a commanding expression as they hurried past the throngs. He had been fighting self-doubt ever since the shadows had engulfed the Kolpraxa and absorbed his hapless crew. Thanks to his halfbreed genetics, Gale’nh was able to resist the Shana
Rei, and Osira’h now hoped that he could also find the inner strength to help forge an alliance with the fire elementals.
The three of them ran up the steep spiraling staircases to the apex of the main tower. Osira’h could see the flickering backwash of faeros light through crystalline structural blocks. When she, Muree’n, and Gale’nh finally rushed out onto the high platform, the atmosphere was like a bonfire. Hot air seared Osira’h’s mouth and nose as she inhaled, and she could feel a crackle on her skin. She and Gale’nh reeled from the onslaught of heat, but Muree’n bowed her head and marched forward like a soldier about to take a strategic hill.
Mage-Imperator Jora’h stood with his arms upraised before the fireballs, his glittersilk robes flapping in the fiery breezes, the edges singed brown. His sinuous hair flew loose, writhing around his head like a corona. He stretched out his hands and squeezed his eyes shut as he concentrated. His face was tight, his lips drawn back. He shouted into the thermal white noise. “You must help us. The pain of Rusa’h brought you.”
The faeros loomed in the sky, rotating ellipsoids of flame as large as spaceships. The elementals throbbed as if they could hear him. Jora’h strained, but he could not make them understand.
Osira’h could feel the fireballs all the way to the core of her being, a looming presence that was familiar to her—defiant, yet frightened. Rusa’h had called them here, and she doubted that her father could control them himself. He needed her—just as she needed her siblings. Together, they could get through to the capricious fiery elementals.
Clasping hands with Gale’nh and Muree’n, she called out with her mind. Osira’h was the perfect combination of breeding: all the strength of the Mage-Imperator, and all the sensitivity and telepathy of a green priest. The Ildiran Empire had tried for generations, breeding and misbreeding, to create someone exactly like her. Muree’n and Gale’nh, similar attempts at developing just the right hybrid, each had a significant power, and Osira’h drew on them now.
Not long ago, she and her half-brother Rod’h had gone out to find the faeros and beg them to make an alliance. But even though they made contact, the faeros had been too afraid of the creatures of darkness. It was unnerving to think that even the fire elementals were intimidated by the Shana Rei.
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