Haroun frowned at her. “What we did was important enough to anyone who was tricked or killed by those charlatans on Rakkem, General.”
An unwanted flood of images passed through Keah’s mind as she remembered the breeding warehouses, the organ-storage facilities, the horrific and ineffective “treatments” designed to prey upon desperate people, the embryos and newborns harvested for biological material.
“You’re right, Admiral. That place was a noxious weed that had to be pulled from the Spiral Arm. But now it’s time to get back to saving the human race for a better tomorrow.”
The returning battle group cruised into the Lunar Orbital Complex at Earth, the CDF’s main operations center, which had been constructed in the rubble of the destroyed Moon. Trading ships, delivery vessels, and construction crews flitted around the numerous spacedocks.
Keah was glad to see dozens of operational Mantas flying about in military practice maneuvers. Emergency repair crews had worked around the clock to reconstruct the ships damaged in the encounter with the Shana Rei and their black robots in the Onthos home system. The creatures of darkness wished to wipe out all intelligent life, and they weren’t the sort of enemy King Peter and Queen Estarra could negotiate with.
That meant this war against the Shana Rei and their black robots was going to be a balls-out fight, and it wouldn’t be over until either the enemies were defeated, or the human race was extinct. General Keah preferred the former outcome.
As the strike force returned to the LOC, the comm filled with a flurry of transmissions, including a long list of “urgent administrative matters,” which General Keah ignored. Rakkem was horrific, but she had enjoyed being away from the paperwork, at least for a little while.
“I’m glad to have the Okrun back home, General,” said Admiral Haroun, “but I admit, it felt good to be doing something active and important.”
Keah felt a warm glow to hear him say that. Haroun was one of her three lead admirals, all of whom had been promoted for bureaucratic reasons during the decades of peace after the Elemental War. She would have preferred that officers be promoted because they demonstrated spectacular prowess on the battlefield—as she herself had done early in her career. Twenty years of peace had been a wonderful respite for the human race, but calm stability was not conducive to producing seasoned commanding officers.
Haroun, along with his colleagues Admirals Handies and Harvard, were collectively called “the Three H’s.” The emerging threat of the Shana Rei and the need for aggressive defenses had forced those three to step up to the plate, but General Keah wasn’t sure they had it in them. At least Haroun had performed well during the recent Rakkem crackdown. Now if only she could see the same improvement in Handies and Harvard …
The returning Mantas separated to their assigned positions in the Lunar Orbital Complex, while the Okrun cruised to the headquarters spacedocks, where Keah saw a sight that gladdened her heart. She smiled to Haroun and said, “I like your Juggernaut just fine, Admiral, but I prefer mine.”
Her flagship, the Kutuzov, hung there with running lights aglow. A bright patchwork of new repairs across its hull bore witness to the damage inflicted by the Shana Rei and the bugbots. The stardrive engines were new, the destroyed decks now restored. The Kutuzov looked absolutely beautiful. “Now that’s what I like to see.”
On the comm screen, jowly Admiral Harvard smiled at her. “Welcome back, General. You’ve noticed the surprise we have for you?”
“It’s a pleasant surprise indeed. I wasn’t expecting the Kutuzov to be finished for another week.”
Harvard nodded. “We completed all inspections, but someone needs to take the flagship out on a shakedown cruise. We thought you might like to do it yourself.”
“Absolutely.” Keah was anxious to be back on her own bridge. “I’ll come to LOC headquarters for a briefing—and the operative part is brief. What else has fallen apart in the Spiral Arm while I was gone?”
“There have been many disturbing reports, General,” said Harvard. “Please keep your schedule clear. I’ll set up a succession of briefings.”
Keah frowned. “Brief, Admiral. Brief.” The Three H’s seemed to think meetings could solve everything.
* * *
Despite her reservations about sitting in a room and talking, General Keah found the briefings informative and necessary. With reports of all the shadow cloud sightings and bugbot encounters, she could dispatch her ships—preferably loaded to the gills with enhanced sun bombs.
Admiral Handies presented his preliminary report with so much excitement she expected him to announce a substantial victory over the Shana Rei. Instead, he summarized the progress of ship repair and presented the dispersal of currently deployed CDF Mantas and Juggernauts, as well as full budgetary breakdowns for new battleship construction. The costs were offset by drastically reduced stardrive fuel costs, thanks to the reliable supplies and generous discounts from Iswander Industries.
When the main briefings were finished, a flustered Dr. Jocko Krieger appeared in the conference room. The weapons scientist was fifteen minutes late, but when he walked in and unrolled his projection pad on the table, he just started talking as if everyone had been waiting for him. “I’m pleased to report that we now have six fabrication stations in full operation throughout the LOC. Each station is producing enhanced sun bombs at the rate of five per day.”
Keah was pleased. “Now that’ll do some damage. Are they being deployed?”
“Since you departed for Rakkem, General, twenty-five Mantas have been fully loaded and dispatched on patrol. All they need is something to blow up.”
Admiral Harvard spoke up. “I can give you the full mission plan, identify which systems they’re visiting and what their patrol routes are. Sooner or later they’re going to encounter a Shana Rei infestaton.”
Keah set aside the lengthy document. “I’ll review it later. Is the Kutuzov loaded with sun bombs, too?”
Krieger gave a vigorous nod. “Fully loaded, plus an extra ten percent, General. I thought you’d want that.”
“Yes, Dr. Krieger, I definitely do.”
The scientist kept talking about his accomplishments, patting himself on the back if no one else would. “The orbital labs are manufacturing at full capacity, ma’am.” He quickly added, “With full safety systems in place this time.”
“Good.” Keah turned to Handies. “What else did you have to report?”
The other Admiral displayed a succession of starfield images; each one showed black blots, as if someone had smeared an ink-covered thumb across space. “Shadow clouds are appearing, dark nebulae that haven’t been mapped before. They seem to be … leaking out of space.” He shook his head. “I suspect it has something to do with the Shana Rei.”
“No shit,” General Keah said. She looked down at the images—swirling blobs of opaque smoke that seemed to be expanding from numerous origin points. “Are they threatening any star systems yet?”
“Some, but not directly. The shadow clouds seem to be moving, and we’re trying to map them. Several Mantas have gone out to take images. The largest cloud is on the outskirts of the Relleker system.”
Keah immediately made up her mind where the Kutuzov would go on the shakedown cruise. “We’ll head out as soon as possible.”
“But the shadow clouds have made no threatening moves yet,” Admiral Harvard pointed out.
Dr. Krieger let out a loud snort—a snort that Keah agreed with.
“Their existence is a threatening move, Admiral,” she said. “Now, if we’re finished, here? Give me summaries of this data, and I’ll take it back to the Kutuzov. I’ve decided to move up my launch. We’ll be out of here before the end of the day.”
CHAPTER
15
ARITA
After dreaming of serving the trees, Arita considered the betrayal of Kennebar’s voidpriests and the Gardeners the greatest treason imaginable. They meant to bring about the downfall of the verdani mind, and the
y wanted to watch her die.
As the threatening voidpriests came for her and Collin, the chittering Onthos swarmed into the fronds overhead. They stared down, no longer pretending to be innocuous survivors to elicit sympathy. These creatures were evil. The voidpriests were even worse. Kennebar wanted to kill Arita, and they intended to absorb Collin.
That sickened her—and made her angry. She looked within herself, cast about for any sort of strength, any unexpected hope.
Collin had sent his mind into the heartwood of the silent worldtrees; he had communed with them, demanded answers, and upon emerging, he seemed inspired by what he had learned. “I know what you are now!” he shouted to the voidpriests as he pulled Arita close. He glared up at the Onthos. “The trees told me.”
Kennebar and his dark companions were undeterred. They reached toward their trapped victims, and Arita and Collin pressed back against the trunk of the huge tree behind them. “The worldtrees are not dead,” Collin said. “They are aware of you!”
“The trees are weak,” said Kennebar.
Then Arita felt the whispers stir in her mind again with a wordless urgency. Something else was awakening in the cosmos, something that sensed the danger of the growing shadows. Arita didn’t understand it, but she reached out for it nevertheless.
She had despaired of ever knowing what it was like to be a green priest, to share thoughts with a mind so vast. But the trees had altered her, left her open for something more. It seemed impossible, but she realized that the inner voice also belonged to some grand sentience, different from the verdani. It was beyond the faeros, wentals, and hydrogues. Arita was connected to it, could commune with it the same way Collin connected with the trees.
As the voidpriests reached out to kill them, coronas of blackness shimmered from their hands. Arita felt Collin grab her like a safety net. “The trees know me,” he rasped. “They remember me … and they have to remember themselves!”
Collin dug deep and touched the slumbering worldforest, while Arita called on that other presence. And the power of her plea joined with his, magnifying it, building, reverberating until it woke the trees at last, forcing the verdani to defend themselves.
Arita felt dizzy as the inner sounds became a roar in her ears. Her vision expanded, and she could see through the clustered trees, their thick fronds interlocked in a canopy that now began to stir. Leaves thrashed about, and vines twisted up from the forest floor.
Startled by the unexpected response, the alien Onthos skittered away, some scrambling higher into the fronds while others dashed across the branches.
Kennebar and his voidpriests froze as if in disbelief.
Collin shouted out to the verdani. “Save us! Save the forest.”
The other voice inside Arita also thrummed out wordlessly, offering defenses against the spreading stain of the destructive shadow.
Alive, the thrashing fronds hurled dozens of fleeing Gardeners into the air, dashing them against the branches. Newly wakened vines and branches reached out to catch the Onthos and squeeze them like huge fists.
Fronds whipped about with the sound of a great windstorm. Branches wrapped around Kennebar, engulfing him. The voidpriest leader struggled with his ebony arms, soulless eyes wide on his blank, shadowed face. The other tainted priests made no sound as they struggled.
Arita felt as if her mind would burst from the surge of energy using her as a conduit. Collin’s eyes were squeezed shut, his lips drawn back. He groaned at the strain of the impossible effort.
The trees shuddered with a last gasp of their own energy. Gold bark scales flaked away, and the tree trunks split open with a resounding crack. Gaps in the heartwood spread wider, yawning like dark and dangerous mouths in the thick trunks. The frond tentacles that held the struggling voidpriests scooped them into the gaps. Thrashing, the dark priests fell into the wooden maws of the angry trees, which swallowed them like predators devouring prey.
It took only seconds, but one by one, all of the tainted voidpriests were swept into the yawning gaps, and the openings snapped shut again with a loud crack.
Arita gasped, and Collin still clung to her. They collapsed, shaking, onto the tangled platform high in the trees where the isolationist priests had made their home. Arita didn’t understand what she had just experienced, but now she dared to hope they might survive after all. The trees around them thrummed, shaking as if in great pain.
Collin rose to his knees. He touched the worldtree trunk again, as if for reassurance. The wood shuddered. The conjoined trunks that had swallowed the voidpriests now rumbled and spasmed. Alarmed, he grabbed Arita’s hand. “Come on, it’s not over yet. We’re not safe!”
Where the heartwood mouths had snapped shut, a black stain began to spread as if from a fatal dose of poison. More golden bark scales fell off, tinkling down and leaving the wood blotchy, like the skin of a leprous lizard.
“The trees are dying,” Collin cried. “We have to climb down.”
They scrambled to the fronds and began to drop from one branch to another. The broad fanlike fronds fell off as if being ejected by the worldtrees. Arita and Collin were still high above the ground, and she felt the trees rocking. Loud shattering sounds echoed through the air as parts of the contaminated trunks broke apart in the spreading blackness. Consuming the voidpriests was killing the trees from the heartwood out.
“We’ve got to make it to the forest floor!” Collin yelled. “These trees sacrificed themselves, but they’ll help us for as long as they can.”
Taking risks, they jumped down to lower branches, clutching fronds and barely catching themselves in time. Arita had spent much of her youth climbing among the trees, and she remembered those skills now. As a green priest, Collin was in tune with the worldforest, even though the verdani mind was stunned and writhing now.
High above, heavy boughs cracked and broke off, tumbling down to smash through the thickets of dying fronds.
“Faster!” Arita risked a glance upward and saw that the tree trunk, branches, and fronds had all turned black, like pure coal, and the stain was spreading as fast as they could flee. With cracking and crumbling sounds above, more shards of the burned-out worldtree fell all around them.
She and Collin both let go of the last branch, fell the rest of the way to the ground, and tumbled into the underbrush.
“Run!” Collin said.
They bolted away from the thick trunk. The poisoned trees turned dark and each collapsed into a mound of razor-edged crystal shards like fossilized obsidian.
The shards cut their skin, but Arita and Collin got far enough away to check each other for injuries. They were both shocked, but safe now. Arita held him, and they stared at the black scars of shattered worldtree wood.
“Did we kill them?” Collin asked. “Did we cause all that destruction?”
“The trees were dying already,” Arita said. “And we would be dead, if we hadn’t summoned help. The best thing we can do now is get home and bring the rest of the green priests back here to fight the Onthos.”
CHAPTER
16
ZHETT KELLUM
The smoke from the departing faeros dissipated in the bright Ildiran sky, and Zhett Kellum shook her head. “A Shana Rei shadow cloud, a robot attack fleet, and a swarm of giant fireballs all in the space of a week. And I thought running a distillery would be a boring career.”
Patrick Fitzpatrick slid his arms around her waist. “Don’t forget the hydrogues and the shadows that destroyed our skymine on Golgen. That’s why we had to go to Kuivahr in the first place.”
“You two brought bad luck with you, by damn,” said Del Kellum. With his barrel chest and potbelly, he was clearly the stockiest man among the Ildiran crowds in the Foray Plaza.
“I prefer to call it ‘circumstances beyond our control,’ Dad,” Zhett said.
Her son Kristof and baby Rex were also with them. Toff, who had no sense of personal danger, was grinning up at where the faeros had vanished. He shaded his eyes against t
he dazzling Ildiran sunlight, but the fireballs were long gone. “That was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen!”
Zhett raised her eyebrows. “You have a high bar.”
“Let’s hope the sight lasts you a while, boy,” Del said. “We can’t afford too many similar adventures.”
“We can’t afford adventures … or anything else,” Patrick said. “We lost our skymine on Golgen, we lost the distillery on Kuivahr, and it’s not likely we’re going to set up new operations any time soon. Who would finance us?”
Del puffed up his chest. “By the Guiding Star, I’m a former Speaker of the Roamer clans! I can find credit. Someone will fund us.”
Patrick frowned. “Nobody with any sense, once they look at our string of bad luck.”
Zhett interjected, “Not bad luck. Circumstances beyond our control.”
Thankfully, most of their distillery crew had escaped the shadows and black robots, fleeing in time, though her heart felt heavy to know that their operations manager, Marius Denva, had not gotten away. He was the last to leave the distillery, for reasons that had made sense to him, but which certainly seemed stupid to her in retrospect. He hadn’t made it out before the black shell swallowed the planet. Even those ships that did make it to orbit had a difficult time evading the black robots. Fortunately, the Solar Navy had rounded up Zhett and her family, along with Osira’h and Prince Reynald.
Nearby, Reynald looked weak and sickly, but he kept himself steady. His face was drawn with concern rather than pain as he stared up at the towers of the Prism Palace. He muttered, “Please be all right up there, Osira’h.”
Before long, the Mage-Imperator emerged from the arch accompanied by Osira’h, Gale’nh, and Muree’n. All of them looked scorched, their faces red, their hair singed, their clothes crisped. A resounding cheer broke out among the Ildirans, and Zhett found herself grinning.
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