The Ildiran audience cheered. Some blew on shrill pipes, making a piercing noise that signified their appreciation. Osira’h tore her gaze from the beautiful display to look at Reyn. Even behind his protective filmgoggles, she could see an excited shine in his eyes, and she knew she had chosen the right thing to show him. “I’m glad you like it.”
She saw a flicker of pain cross his face like a sudden quake. He flinched, squeezed his eyes shut, and struggled to concentrate. Finally, he drove back the nerve spasm.
Although the medical kithmen found Reyn’s sickness intriguing, they had offered no breakthroughs. Yet. They had studied his genetic samples, requested several other tests. With their full attention, they pored over the cause, the symptoms, and possible treatments to mitigate his pain. Confederation doctors might have access to more background in the morphology of human diseases, but Osira’h knew that Ildiran medical kithmen had an added drive, since they were trying to find a cure for Reyn in the name of the Mage-Imperator.
She had also sent data and samples to her sister Tamo’l on Kuivahr, where she could study them in her sanctuary domes. Her own medical researchers might have ideas. Osira’h was determined to find some help for him.
As the ballet continued, she reached out and took Reyn’s hand, squeezing hard, focusing her thoughts as if she could break down his barriers. She summoned the considerable mental powers she had inherited from her green priest mother and her father, the Mage-Imperator. That combination of telepathic skills had allowed her to command the hydrogues and the faeros. Now, however, she was just trying to open herself up to Reyn. She wanted to touch his mind and console him.
Alas, as hard as she tried to break through, the Prince felt no contact. His mind was silent to her, and his thoughts remained his own.
Nevertheless, even without telepathy, he seemed to draw strength from her presence.
After the ballet, they visited her brother Gale’nh, with his bleached skin and hair. Despite his wan appearance, Gale’nh seemed to improve each day. While the Adar’s training maniple was away, engaged in intensive combat exercises with the CDF, Gale’nh wore his formal tal uniform, as if it kept him connected to the Solar Navy. Osira’h knew he wanted to be out there with Adar Zan’nh.
When she introduced him to Reyn, Gale’nh touched his own pale skin and explained, “I looked into the shadows that killed every other person aboard the Kolpraxa.” He walked across his room and stared out at the curved crystalline towers of the city. “I have no wish to fight them again, but the creatures of darkness are still out there.” He wrapped his arms around himself, as if huddling in the light.
Osira’h used their telepathic connection to offer Gale’nh strength and reassurance, but there were dark corners in her brother’s mind. The full details of what he had experienced were still hidden. He was incredibly strong—she knew that—but Osira’h could feel how he had been changed, as if his soul had diminished.
After Gale’nh’s return, he had met with many lens kithmen, who drew upon their own abilities and focused his recovery meditations, trying to bring him closer to the Lightsource.
Reyn looked over at Osira’h. “I have heard that Anton Colicos described the Shana Rei in some of the translations he brought back to the worldforest, but I never really understood the story.”
Osira’h said, “If the Shana Rei have come back, we need to learn how to protect ourselves, how to fight them. The Solar Navy has some prototype weapons drawn from the old records, but in the old war, the Ildiran race survived the creatures of darkness only because Mage-Imperator Xiba’h convinced the faeros to fight alongside us.”
Reyn was obviously concerned. “The faeros are dangerous allies to have. They leveled Mijistra, burned much of Theroc. They are not friends.”
Osira’h was determined though. “The faeros listened when I called them before. Maybe they will listen again.”
“There is another way to bring them,” Gale’nh said. “Mage-Imperator Xiba’h did it long ago.”
Osira’h explained to Reyn, “Mage-Imperator Xiba’h called the faeros by immolating himself. He threw himself into a great pyre, and his agony through the thism was so loud that the faeros came.”
Reyn looked at Osira’h in astonishment. “You’re not going to do that!”
“No, I won’t,” she said, then added in a smaller voice, “unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
NINETY-EIGHT
ORLI COVITZ
As Tom Rom’s ship rushed toward her, at first Orli didn’t understand. She activated the Proud Mary’s comm again. “Look, maybe I wasn’t clear. I’m the only person on this ship, and I think I’m infected with a deadly alien microorganism. You cannot come aboard.” Nearby, the glowing debris cloud from the Onthos city continued to expand.
DD said, “Should we transmit copies of the records to him, so that a second person has all the data about the Onthos and clan Reeves.”
“Not yet. There’s something odd about this guy.”
Tom Rom’s face came back on the screen. His expression hadn’t changed; his eyes were just as intent. “I repeat, stand down and prepare to be boarded.”
Now Orli was losing patience. “And I repeat—this ship is quarantined! Do you have static in your ears?”
Tom Rom opened fire.
In the copilot’s seat, DD reacted with speedy compy reflexes and punched in a course-adjustment burst that sent the Proud Mary into a corkscrew spin. The lurch threw Orli out of her padded chair, and she barely managed to catch one of the arms before being thrown face-first into the control panel.
The stranger had specifically targeted their engines, trying to cripple the ship, but his low-powered jazer blasts skimmed past. Only one beam grazed the hull, causing no damage.
Orli scrambled to pull herself upright. “DD, get us out of here!”
The compy accelerated the Proud Mary away from the expanding debris cloud of the Onthos city. She feared that the Friendly compy would ask too many questions—Which course, Orli? What acceleration would you prefer, Orli? Do we have a final destination, Orli?—but the compy simply did his work. The acceleration threw her to the deck.
“Good work, DD,” she muttered under her breath as she hauled herself back onto the seat. She hammered the comm controls, yelling at Tom Rom. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Attempting to acquire a valuable sample. I can extract the virus from your dead tissue, if necessary, but I would prefer you make this simpler.” He opened fire again.
The Proud Mary did not have military-grade shields, but they offered enough protection to absorb most of the blast. Her ship shuddered and jerked. She took the piloting controls from DD and began a looping, zigzagging course away, but Tom Rom’s ship stayed close behind them.
Orli gritted her teeth. “Is he insane?”
“I cannot make an assessment of that, Orli,” DD said. “His weapons did not cause significant damage, but our shields are weakened.”
She flicked her glance around the cockpit, still getting to know the ship. “I didn’t expect to take us into battle. Do we have any weapons?”
“There is a hand jazer in the captain’s locker. Don’t you remember? You carried it when we first entered the Onthos city.”
“That’s not going to do me much good in a battle like this. I meant ship’s weapons.”
She scanned space around them. The derelict city was far from any inhabited planet, since the Onthos had not wanted to be found. Deeper into the system, there was an asteroid field she could hide in, but Tom Rom would run her down long before she reached it. The only thing out here was the alien city itself, which was nothing more than an expanding cloud of debris that still throbbed with dissipating thermal energy.
It would have to do.
Orli continued to fly an evasive course, but Tom Rom closed the gap between them. His engines were better, his shields were better—and his weapons were definitely better. He continued to fire at her with carefully modulated low-power bursts. If
he accidentally hit the wrong mark, maybe he would blow up the Proud Mary instead of crippling the ship. That wouldn’t be Orli’s first choice, but at least it would keep him from getting his hands on the plague. . . .
“DD, we have spare fuel canisters don’t we?”
“Yes. Captain Kett insisted that we be prepared for emergencies.”
“This definitely qualifies as an emergency. We have to lose him. Go into the back compartment, take out one of the ekti canisters, and rig it for detonation. We should have small triggers in the spare-parts locker.”
The little compy left the piloting deck, though he seemed hesitant. “My training is not necessarily appropriate for this activity.”
“The ship’s database should have all the information you need.”
“I will do my best.”
“You’ll do fine, DD. Just get it ready, and I’ll do the blowing-up part. Meanwhile, I’ll keep this nutcase occupied.”
“Perhaps he will see reason if you explain the situation to him,” DD said.
“I wouldn’t hold my breath—I’m just stalling for time so you can rig the canister.” Orli opened a channel, and he appeared on the screen. “Look, Mr. Rom, let me make a bargain with you. I can give you the complete history of an alien race, the architecture of that space city, the full records of clan Reeves, full documentation of the disease and its progress.”
Even as Tom Rom raced after them, his expression remained placid. He didn’t look angry, didn’t smile. “Very well, I will accept those records as adjunct information. Transmit them. They may be useful in the overall characterization of the disease—but my employer has very specific needs. I am required to take a blood and tissue sample.”
Orli saw red at the fringes of her vision. “And you’re not listening to me. Every person aboard that station died of the plague—one hundred percent mortality rate! It has to end here. I can’t let anyone else be exposed.”
Tom Rom seemed unimpressed. “I have adequate quarantine measures. The organism will remain safely contained. There is no need for concern.”
She muted the comm when DD returned to the pilot deck. “It’s prepared, Orli. What is our next step?”
“We’ll jettison the canister and detonate it. Can you rig the signal through my station?”
“I have already done so, Orli.”
“This may be our last chance.”
The compy moved to the rear of the Proud Mary and inserted the ekti canister into the disposal bay.
Orli reopened contact with her pursuer. “I don’t know what kind of sick hobbies your boss has, but you don’t get a sample of this disease.” She leaned closer to the screen, hoping to impress her determination upon Tom Rom. “Look, this plague is going to kill me, and it’ll be a long and horrible end. I saw the bodies of the other victims. Between you and me, I’d rather just self-destruct here—quick, clean, a final flash of glory.”
Tom Rom seemed surprised by that. “You don’t appear to show any symptoms. You can’t be so eager to die.”
“Who said I was eager? But I’m looking at the big picture.”
“You are bluffing,” Tom Rom said.
On the screen, DD signaled that he was ready. Orli’s hand raced across the control panel. “Am I?”
She jettisoned the ekti canister, and two seconds later she pressed the detonation signal. The fuel tank exploded in a bright flash, sufficient to blind Tom Rom’s sensors, to startle him . . . and maybe, she hoped, confuse him. She only needed a few seconds.
Orli instantly changed course, not caring how much fuel she burned. She shot off at maximum acceleration along the course she had already laid. The Proud Mary plunged down like a launched projectile. Orli shut off all her engines, all lights, every external power source.
Her ship hurtled along in dark silence under its own momentum, leaving Tom Rom’s vessel behind. With his sensors blinded, he wouldn’t be able to see where she had gone.
The Proud Mary slipped into the expanding, simmering debris cloud. Her pursuer would never find them in the glowing thunderstorm of wreckage and radiation.
DD returned to the pilot deck. “Did it work, Orli?”
“Well enough—I think.” Her pulse was racing, and she felt feverish. Before she could catch herself, she vomited on the deck. Maybe it was just the tension, a response to the terror, the adrenaline rush.
But probably not.
She wiped her mouth while DD hurried to find a cleanup kit for the mess on the deck.
“Now we sit here and wait for him to go away,” Orli said. “This isn’t exactly how I had hoped to spend my last days.”
NINETY-NINE
AELIN
No one in the ekti-extraction field objected when Aelin asked to use an inspection pod so he could see the strange nodules up close. The controls were simple enough, and he accessed information from the worldforest. The bloaters called to him, a powerful, weighty presence that seemed to promise so much more. He wondered why no one else could sense it. . . .
He left the industrial complex, with its cold metal decks and artificial light, and headed toward the majesty of the drifting cluster. The thrumming sensation in the back of his mind indicated a presence greater than and different from the huge tapestry of the verdani mind—possibly only a hint of something even more vast.
He needed to comprehend it better. The bloaters were much more than mere space plankton. He wished he could have shared this experience with Shelud, even if only through telink before his brother died of the plague. . . .
Now he tried to recapture his sense of wonder so that it brightened his shadowy depression. He had never felt like this before. Aelin always had dreams, always looked to the sky and imagined places beyond the worldforest, but now that he had ventured far out into the Spiral Arm, he had not found what he expected. Neither had Shelud.
The inspection pod was cramped, built for only one person; it had external arms and manipulator tools for servicing space equipment. Aelin set his potted treeling beside him and flew forward, paying little attention to the lights of other Iswander ships and facilities.
Hundreds of bloaters had been drained of ekti and the cluster was diminished by half. The remaining nodules continued to drift toward the nearest star, which grew brighter every day.
The pod approached the greenish tan spheres. He touched the treeling, opened his thoughts as a green priest, but the phantom half-entity he sensed out there had nothing to do with the verdani mind. In fact, the looming presence seemed to make the stars themselves insignificant.
Suddenly an alert notice skittered across the comm channels, and the ekti-field workers withdrew. Extraction operations raised their shields. Alarms began to ring.
Aelin barely knew how to work the pod controls, and he didn’t understand what was happening until he saw one of the distant bloaters glow, then a closer one responded with a bright flash, followed by a flare from the nucleus of a third bloater. The floating spheres lit up like scattered firecrackers in a staccato pattern.
So quickly that it seemed instantaneous, Aelin felt a tingle through his skin, a flicker in the treeling beneath his fingertips. He looked out at the gentle curve of the swollen nodule drifting right in front of him—
A chain lightning of mysterious signals ricocheted from one bloater to another, and the one directly before Aelin lit up with an explosive flash. It sent a surge through telink, an avalanche of light that continued to build as other bloaters flared, spark after spark.
He gasped, and his mind ignited. The flash was entirely inside of him, behind his eyes, throughout his mind. An overwhelming flood filled him with awe and ecstasy . . . and continued to build.
The flash was over in an instant, but Aelin could barely see. He tried to focus again, but the light was everywhere. He saw that his treeling had died, burned out in the pot beside him. His pod reeled, tumbling end over end.
Within him, the flare grew brighter and brighter, and Aelin had no way to stop it. Even retreating into unconsc
iousness was not enough. He couldn’t get the light out of his head.
ONE HUNDRED
JESS TAMBLYN
Inside the hollow comet of Academ, streams of energized wental water poured from the walls and pooled into the spherical zero-gravity ocean. The water thundered in from all directions, aerating the pool, and droplets orbited in sparkling rings.
Academ’s air was rich with mist, and residual wental energy added a glow to the walls. Jess drifted outside the fringes of the water as he watched a group of students at their exercise time, jetting through the water, launching themselves through the surface tension. Their activities were monitored by three Governess compies, who hovered like overprotective hawks.
Seth Reeves joined his classmates in an enthusiastic game of tag that had questionable and inconsistent rules. Jess had noticed that the boy missed his father even more than most of the children here did, because Garrison was all he had left, but Seth had thrived here in the classes. He truly loved being at Academ.
Sadly, a few days ago, Seth’s father had sent the terrible news about clan Reeves and how their new Okiah colony, including the young students withdrawn from Academ, had perished from the alien plague. All of them.
Jess had been there when Seth received the message. The boy had shifted from side to side, clearly not sure how to react. “I didn’t really know them,” he mumbled. “I only met my grandfather once, and . . . well, they should never have left Rendezvous. They wanted us to go with them. And if we had—”
Tears stung Jess’s eyes when he thought of Jamie and Scott Reeves, rambunctious boys with overactive imaginations. But he couldn’t control the Guiding Star that other Roamers might see. . . .
Cesca drifted up to him in the zero gravity, maneuvering with a compressed-air pack. She bumped against him and slipped her arm around his waist. Back when they had both been possessed with wental energy, he had been able to sense Cesca from star systems away; now they were just normal human beings again, although occasionally the water elementals initiated a flash of contact.
The Dark Between the Stars Page 49