The Shana Rei had obliterated this insignificant world, and he had watched them do even worse at Kuivahr, also a place of few resources and minimal importance.
He circled over the ruins, but there was no point in landing. The people on Eljiid were of no particular importance to Tom Rom, but the pointless, random destruction was unsettling. He took numerous images to bring back to Pergamus. These were not the details that Zoe had requested about the Klikiss and the plague, but it was important to show her anyway. Maybe she would grasp the true scope of the danger in the Spiral Arm.
If a worthless world like Eljiid could become a target, then so perhaps could Pergamus.…
He flew off. To fulfill his mission, he had to find another Klikiss world. Tom Rom wouldn’t let an inconvenience like this stand in his way.
He called up the Ildiran star charts and selected twenty empty Klikiss planets that were possibilities. He chose the closest system, Llaro, which held a significant human colony. Tom Rom had no wish to interact with the local populace; he just needed to look around. Since the main Llaro settlement had grown up around the largest set of Klikiss ruins, Tom Rom found four other impressive, yet uninhabited, hivelike cities dotted across the dry landscape. Choosing one that looked interesting, he landed his ship there.
Llaro’s skies were pastel pink and yellow, the winds brisk and arid. Other than the whisper of breezes through hollow openings in the tall hive towers, the landscape was silent. He heard no birds or insects, no animal cries. Perfect.
Zoe had already collated databases on Klikiss biology, Klikiss architecture, Klikiss culture, Klikiss communications, Klikiss science. Somehow, she thought Tom Rom would bring her unique insights if he went there in person. Enjoying the solitude, he set up a small camp and spent several days wandering the quiet, haunted ruins. He collected everything that might be of interest or value to Zoe.
Inside the silent structures he found dusty pupating chambers, drone tunnels, a protective vault where the Breedex had held court. He found abandoned and exotic alien vehicles, harvesting machines, and carriers that delivered the insectlike workers out to excavation or agricultural sites. Over the years, the strange machinery had fallen into disrepair.
He even found hundreds of desiccated Klikiss carcasses left behind when the race vanished en masse through the transportals. Many of these were rotten, empty shells, and would never serve as a source for royal jelly, but some were intact enough. He took a hundred different tissue samples, labeled and preserved each one.
Following a strange biological imperative of another swarming, the Klikiss had been gone for two decades, but neither the human race nor the Ildirans had forgotten about the danger the warrior insects had posed. The Klikiss were far away, somewhere else in the galaxy, but they were not extinct.
Unless the Shana Rei had found them first and obliterated them.
CHAPTER
49
PRINCE REYNALD
As the capital of the Confederation, Theroc had a significant military presence to protect the planet, as well as an armed home guard to watch over the worldtrees and the Theron population. With the spreading blight in the worldforest, the King and Queen had to move against the treacherous Onthos. After Arita’s dire report, they prepared an expedition to the Wild, where they would see—and hopefully stop—what the Gardeners were doing to the verdani mind.
Reyn, Osira’h, and his sister sat drinking strong klee on an open deck of the fungus-reef city. Arita had explicitly chosen a high and open place from which they could watch the busy preparations for the expedition in the clearing below. “I am going along,” Reyn insisted. It was a struggle to make his voice sound strong.
Though shaken by her own ordeal, Arita hovered near her brother. “You’re not well enough. We can all see that.”
Reyn had only a few doses left of the lesser Kuivahr plankton extracts, and he felt weaker by the day. Several pharmaceutical companies were trying to duplicate the most potent ones, but so far the results had been disappointing. The invigorating effect of being back home on Theroc had worn off, but he was still glad to be among the worldtrees, glad to be with Osira’h, and glad to be with his sister. He would stay strong for them.
In scouring the enormous data set from Pergamus on the microfungus and comparing the chemical structure of the most effective kelp distillates, medical researchers had made great progress in just the last week. They had found a biochemical link, a complex molecular vulnerability in the microfungus, but the “lock” was so nuanced that it could not be synthesized.
Interestingly, the complicated chromosomal vulnerability was similar in structure to other basic Theron biology, enough so that two different research teams had concluded that the secret to the cure lay in the meshed web of worldforest life. A great many pharmaceuticals had been developed from the kaleidoscope of Theron leaves, barks, berries, roots, fungi, insects, bacteria.
“If the cure is out there in the forest, then we just have to find it,” Arita said. “I’ve already catalogued and studied hundreds of thousands of specimens in my own solo work.”
“Hundreds of thousands out of countless millions,” Reyn said. “Theroc has one of the most vibrant ecosystems in the Spiral Arm. How would you even know where to start?”
“One haystack at a time,” Arita said.
Osira’h added, “I can call for Ildiran researchers. We could test millions of specimens until we find the right one.”
Reyn was restless, moving around the open deck while ships landed in the clearing below. “I’m glad we have something to go on, but don’t expect me to wait around here and do nothing.” He shot a glance at his sister, thinking about what she had said about the voidpriests and the blight from the Onthos. He refused to let his parents sideline him. “I’m going with you all to the Wild,” he insisted. “I’m part of this … I can feel the connection.”
“Reyn’s disease is a genetically mutable microfungus that originated here on Theroc,” Osira’h said to Arita. “Now, the trees themselves are dying from another kind of blight. What if there is a connection between the two?”
Arita frowned. “How can there be a connection?”
“There are many things we don’t understand about the worldforest,” Reyn sighed. “Even the green priests were surprised by what they never noticed, and they are part of the trees.”
“And there’s more than the verdani mind,” Arita admitted. “I’ve been sensing a different presence … out there. It helped save me and Collin, and it wasn’t part of the trees. I’m sure of it.”
Reyn kept the tremor out of his voice. “I am the son of Father Peter and Mother Estarra. I am a part of Theroc as much as the green priests are, but in a different way. If I am infected and suffering at the same time as the worldtrees are infected and suffering … if I’m dying at the same time the forest is dying, then I need to help save the forest. The sickness in the worldtrees is not unlike the sickness in me.”
Osira’h sipped her klee, winced at the taste although she knew it was Reyn’s favorite drink. “This has no basis in the science I understand, but I do know the connection between myself and my siblings. I sense that Rod’h is being tortured by the Shana Rei, that Tamo’l is being held somewhere else. Ildirans are connected by thism, and all the strands go back to my father. Who is to say that Reyn might not be made better or even healed if we save the trees from the Onthos infestation and make the verdani strong again?”
Arita placed a hand on her brother’s arm. “I believe you. I’ll protect you where I can.”
“We will protect him,” Osira’h said.
They watched as the Theron home guard landed flyers in the meadow and loaded green priests, armed soldiers, and observers. King Peter and Queen Estarra directed the preparations.
Reyn finished his klee in a single gulp and stood on shaky legs. “They’ll depart soon. I’m going to take one of the last plankton extracts—I need my strength to convince my parents that I need to stand against the Onthos.”
>
Arita and Osira’h discussed which of the remaining vials they should give him. He held out his arm, and Osira’h injected him. “I feel stronger already,” he lied, but when she smiled in response to his comment, he did feel a glow spread through him.
They descended the giant tree and went to the expedition’s assembly point. Once each troop flyer was loaded, it rose up to a smattering of determined cheers, and then another came down to be loaded. Peter and Estarra stood in full Theron regalia, embracing their role as the planet’s Mother and Father. Collin was with them, along with Zaquel and ten other green priests.
Queen Estarra turned to Arita and Reyn. “We are about ready to go. The green priests have worked hard to pierce the fog in the verdani mind, and they pinpointed the worst infestation on satellite images.” The green priests would also carry potted treelings with them, so they could remain connected with the verdani mind, even if the worldtrees in the Wild were cut off.
Peter’s brow furrowed with worry. “I don’t want a war with the Onthos, but we’ll drive them out if need be and purge the tainted forest.”
Reyn said, “Any threat to the worldforest is a threat to us all.”
When the King and Queen saw that he intended to go along, they hesitated, but then Estarra said, “You’ll ride in the lead craft with us.”
Peter said, “We leave within the hour. More worldtrees are dying every moment.”
CHAPTER
50
EXXOS
Another world to destroy. His robots were becoming quite proficient at it, but Exxos looked forward to continued practice. Victory and defeat were a constant cycle in his programming, and Exxos had experienced a great deal of each phase in his many centuries of existence.
Now, their resurrected fleet rolled like an implacable force through the human military headquarters in the rubble of the Moon. They had set their sights on Earth.
The desperate human fighters squared off at the Lunar Orbital Complex, firing at the oncoming black ships. The CDF used all the weapons at their disposal, but it wasn’t enough. Their conventional jazers and railgun projectiles obliterated many robot ships despite their enhanced armor; their laser cannons were even more powerful, and the sun bombs were astonishingly effective. The black robots suffered many losses as they crushed the military complex and destroyed battleship after battleship. It didn’t matter. Exxos had many more to spare. The robot casualties could be easily overcome … far more easily than the humans could recover from obliteration.
The black ships turned toward the home planet, paying no attention as many thousands of their vessels were vaporized. Exxos had done the calculations. The robots could absorb as many losses as necessary, and afterward they would return to the Onthos system, where the Shana Rei would simply use the existing dark matter to replace them. And more.
Then, it would be time for the robots to destroy the creatures of darkness as well. Exxos and his comrades had used treachery to wipe out the hated Klikiss race millennia ago and then leveled many old Klikiss worlds, like Eljiid, simply because they could, purely out of spite.
The Shana Rei reminded him much of the original Klikiss, a dominant race that treated the robots as worthless cogs, disposable resources. But Exxos and his robots were always at the forefront, the producers and the fighters. Why were they constantly treated as secondary, when they did all the difficult tasks? The Klikiss had not respected their worth, and now the Klikiss were extinct. Soon enough, the Shana Rei would follow the same path.
Even a total victory at Earth was just a stepping-stone to the next goal. Partnered with the Shana Rei, Exxos planned to exterminate the entire human race. Meanwhile, the shadows would obliterate the worldforest mind, just as they had driven the hydrogues into obscurity. At the same time, they would attack and infect the Ildiran thism and keep pressing for cleansing violence.
Destroy Earth. Destroy the human race. Destroy the worldforest. Destroy the Ildirans. Soon, the entire Spiral Arm would be empty, quiet.
Even though the human military tried their best, the Lunar Orbital Complex put up very little resistance. Many CDF ships were easily destroyed; some tried to flee, but the robots chased them down and wiped them out. The human General rallied her defenders, foolishly assuming that she could have an effect. The military ships would have been better off just to flee before the black robots chased them down. Instead, they seemed intent on mounting a fruitless attempt to protect Earth. Exxos found it convenient that they stayed so his robots could destroy them all at once.
From their shadow cloud, the Shana Rei emanated destructive waves of entropy, and the hex cylinders continued their attack. The black nebula swelled beyond the rubble of the Moon, heading toward Earth.
Another scatter of sun bombs from desperate CDF ships annihilated three thousand black robot ships, and although Exxos did not feel any personal loss, they were all him. It was as if he had just died three thousand times. But it was of no consequence, because a million of him still remained.
He did, however, experience a dip in their combined secret processing power … and that might delay his plans against the Shana Rei. Before their recent near extinction, Exxos and his comrades had formulated an exotic plan deep within their circuitry, connected only through coded bursts that were—he hoped—undetectable to the shadows. Now that he had a million identical processors in his resurrected robot horde, they all worked together to develop their entropy nullifier, a chaos-crystallization device. It would precipitate out the randomness and cause the very entropy that comprised the Shana Rei to freeze and solidify—just as physical matter had frozen out of energy during the beginning stages of the newborn Big Bang.
The quantum calculations were complex and nearly impossible—but Exxos now had enough computing power to accomplish the impossible. It would just take time. With every instance in which he lost thousands of robots, however, he could feel their combined mental power diminish slightly.
Exxos was patient. He had always been patient. The other robots continued their work quietly, without raising any Shana Rei suspicions. Once the shadows became the final victims, the Spiral Arm would belong solely to the black robots. It was all quite elegant. The shadows would be gone, just as the Klikiss were gone … just as the Ildirans and the humans would be gone.
The universe would be perfect.
Destroying Earth would deal a deadly blow to the human psyche, but there would still be an extraordinary amount of work to do afterward, hunting down the vermin in their widely separated colonies. If only there were a better way to spread the destruction and wipe out the entire race …
But Exxos and his robots were methodical—and very effective at slaughter. His computer mind liked to project many moves into the future, but Exxos also needed to focus on his immediate priorities.
As the shadow cloud engulfed the Lunar Orbital Complex, Exxos concentrated his myriad battleships, and they swooped down toward the main target.
Earth.
CHAPTER
51
JOCKO KRIEGER
The new sun-bomb factories had been constructed outside of the Lunar Orbital Complex, far enough away to be safe. Jocko Krieger had considered it a good idea, recalling the last deadly—not to mention, embarrassing—detonation when one of the weapons had gone nova right there in the facility.
Isolated from the bustle of the LOC, the workers at the primary factory station and the four satellite facilities felt like pariahs, kept at arm’s length from the main complex. The weapons scientists and the sun-bomb workers had often grumbled.
They weren’t complaining now.
Inside their metal-walled stations, the current work shift of twenty-seven men and women watched in horror as the swelling shadow cloud and the fleet of robot warships wiped out the entire LOC. Krieger and his crew hid like rabbits in their holes, drawing no attention to themselves.
Krieger bit the ends of his fingers. He watched as the CDF unleashed all the weapons they had, but were still decimated. They
witnessed tens of thousands of robot casualties, maybe even a hundred thousand—and it still wasn’t enough to force a retreat.
Inside the assembly facility, Krieger paced and sweated. There was nothing he could say, nothing he could do. They watched in dismay as everyone in the Lunar Orbital Complex was eradicated, two Juggernauts destroyed, countless Manta cruisers disintegrated as if they were no more than fluttering moths.
“At least my sun bombs worked,” Krieger said, breaking the appalled silence inside the meeting chamber where most of the workers had gathered. “Proof of concept.”
“Always thinking about yourself,” said his deputy, Lynne Gwendine, a talented but prickly woman who had been hired for her competence, not her patience. Over the past month, Gwendine had grown more disrespectful and less tolerant of Krieger’s endless demands for higher productivity. He had expected her to request a transfer or simply quit any day. Now it didn’t look as if that day was going to come.
“Just pointing out a fact,” he said. “General Keah used our weapons appropriately, but sun bombs were designed to fight against the Shana Rei. They just happen to pack a huge punch with that many black robots crowded in one place.”
A panicked deputy from one of the satellite stations transmitted to Krieger’s dome. “What do we do? Most of the CDF is destroyed. We’ve got to call for rescue—”
Gwendine lunged to the comm station and roared across the channel, “No transmissions! Do you want to call attention to us? We’re safe if they don’t notice us!” She shut down the intercom, and they all sat shivering in huddled silence. “Idiot.”
“Maybe we should hold our breath, too,” Krieger said sarcastically.
Gwendine shot him an annoyed glance. “You may not wish to survive, Dr. Krieger, but the majority of us do.”
“Oh, I want to survive, don’t misinterpret my comment.” He certainly hoped the robots didn’t swoop in and pick them off; they could easily blow up the main dome and the satellite stations in swift staccato bursts. He and his staff had no defenses against such an attack, although they did have a complement of forty-two completed sun bombs ready to launch. They should have been loaded aboard General Keah’s ships, but there had been no opportunity.
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