Garrison understood. Torino very much wanted the job, but Cain had turned her down, which put him in an awkward position. Elisa would have agonized over the politics of it all, but Garrison just said, “I’ll do my best.”
His supervisor looked intense, as if blaming him for something. He knew that Milli Torino was recently divorced, and apparently it had not been pleasant. From his few meetings with her, Garrison couldn’t imagine that the marriage itself had been pleasant either. . . .
She said, “Emphasize how dramatically we’ve stepped up production in only a week. I want him to know that we’re ready for full-scale ship assembly, should the CDF need to go into emergency operations. And as soon as we receive the Ildiran sun bomb plans, our weapons engineers are ready to duplicate them.”
“I’ll do that, ma’am.”
During the day-long tour around the sprawling orbital complex, he found Deputy Cain to be an intelligent, soft-spoken, and interesting individual. In the Prodigal Son, they flew from facility to facility visiting the various operations. Garrison briefed Cain on how the metals were extracted from the lunar rubble field, how the Roamer operations (particularly his own team) produced components that the military ships needed for repair. Cain seemed comfortable with Garrison’s knowledge and his apparent disinterest in politics.
He took the Deputy to the LOC civilian complex for a final debrief. Milli Torino provided summaries of the different operations, as well as repair estimates for the damaged Mantas in the spacedocks, while the largest ships remained parked or tethered to nearby rubble, awaiting their turn.
Cain frowned. “Shouldn’t priority be given to the Juggernauts? They’re our most powerful warships.”
The question jarred her train of thought, and she visibly worked to control her annoyed expression. “There’s a bottleneck, Mr. Deputy. A Juggernaut is so big, only one of our spacedocks is adequate to accommodate the repairs. Six of our docks can work on Mantas. We’re repairing Admiral Harvard’s ship now, because it can be placed back into service the quickest.”
Garrison spoke up. “Also, sir, Juggernaut components are more specialized, and my team is manufacturing them as swiftly as possible. Even if we had all three Juggernauts in the dock, we wouldn’t have enough replacement parts. Yet. Trust me, this schedule allows the greatest number of battleships to be repaired in the shortest possible time.”
Deputy Cain tapped his fingers on the desktop. “I’ll accept that, Mr. Reeves.”
They were interrupted when the green priest Lubai came to Torino’s office and insisted on speaking with Garrison. Now his supervisor looked particularly upset. “We are in an important meeting here. Mr. Reeves can take care of personal matters on his own time.”
The green priest would not be budged. “I have urgent news, a message just received through the worldforest network from Academ. It’s about his son.”
Garrison was on his feet immediately. “Is he all right?”
“A woman claiming to be the boy’s mother withdrew him from the Roamer school. Jess Tamblyn and Cesca Peroni were unable to stop her.”
Garrison tried to wrap his mind around the revelation. “His mother? But she’s dead.”
“Her identity was confirmed as Elisa Reeves, although she called herself Elisa Enturi.”
Her unmarried name? “Elisa’s . . . alive.” He had to say it aloud to help himself believe it. He turned quickly. “And she took Seth?”
“They departed from Academ. Jess and Cesca insisted that you be informed right away.”
Garrison was already moving toward the door of the conference room, casting his apologies to Deputy Cain and the supervisor. “I have to go. Right now.”
Milli Torino was indignant. “You can’t just leave! You’re responsible for important shipyard operations here—”
“I said I have to go.” He understood that the Roamers at the fabrication complex could do their work just fine without him, and he had to get to Academ right away.
Deputy Cain’s expression was more understanding. “Go, Mr. Reeves. No need to worry about having your job back when you return to Earth.”
Rushing into the corridor, Garrison paused, surprised by the comment. “Thank you, Mr. Deputy.” But in his mind, that was the last thing in the universe he was worried about.
He flew the Prodigal Son directly to Academ without stopping at the main inhabited ring of Newstation. He passed through the access zone and rushed to the school offices in the walls of the hollowed-out comet.
When Jess and Cesca joined him, their expressions showed concern. Jess said, “There was nothing we could do. Legally, any parent has the right—”
Garrison held up his hand. “I’m not blaming you. I . . . I just can’t believe Elisa’s still alive.”
“Apparently, she didn’t know that you and Seth had survived, either,” Cesca said. “She was rather upset when she learned it.”
“Do you know where she took my son? I heard Lee Iswander has some massive secret ekti operations—no doubt Elisa’s gone back to him.” He clenched his fist. “That’s no place for a boy. Seth should be here at Academ with other Roamer students.”
“She wouldn’t tell us where she was going,” Cesca said. “In fact, she made a point of refusing.”
He had hardly been able to think during the swift flight from Earth to Newstation, and now he knew his next step would be to track down Iswander’s ekti operations. Even after the industrialist’s disgrace at Sheol, Garrison knew that Elisa would stick with him. She might ignore her son and resent her husband, but she would never, ever abandon Lee Iswander.
Still, he had no idea where to look.
“We have a way to track him down,” Jess said with a smile. “I gave your son a vial of wental water as a souvenir—on purpose. We hoped you would come.”
Garrison was confused. “What good will a vial of wental water do? They can’t protect him . . . can they?”
“The wentals are mostly dormant. But, even though they rarely communicate with us anymore, we can still sense them,” Jess said.
Cesca smiled. “That means we know where that vial of wental water is. We’ve already gathered the coordinates for you. But it’s very strange. . . .”
Garrison was not concerned about esoteric details. He was ready to rush off. “Strange how?”
“The wentals can sense something huge and slumbering there,” Jess added. “We think Iswander is awakening it . . . or harming it. We don’t know.”
ONE HUNDRED AND FIVE
LEE ISWANDER
Out in the industrial complex, the ekti-extraction workers scrambled through a damage assessment after the particularly severe series of bloater flashes. The pumping stations reset their power trains after the overload. All systems checked in, and the production facilities finally came back online.
It was an hour before anyone even noticed the missing green priest, the silent drifting inspection pod.
Iswander couldn’t figure out what had happened. Apparently, after the flashes, Aelin’s pod had spun out of control, its systems dead, life support shutting down, no propulsion. Inside, the green priest was unconscious, perhaps comatose. Alec Pannebaker led a swift retrieval operation to bring the pod back into the modular complex. They dragged the limp green priest out onto the cold deck in the hangar bay.
Iswander tried to control his anger. “Is he alive at least?”
One of the station doctors checked the motionless form. “Barely, sir.”
After Sheol, Iswander could not afford another foolish industrial accident—especially one that the entire green priest network would know about. Inspection pods were supposed to be taken out only for external repairs on the ships and refinery facilities, not for sightseeing—and Aelin had gone out alone with almost no training, without even an environment suit for extra protection. How stupid!
Though the pod’s air was mostly gone and the interior temperature had plunged, Aelin remained in some kind of coma, his metabolism extremely low. His potted tree
ling, however, had not survived: it was withered, its fronds curled up, as if burned from within.
As they carried him away to the medical module, Aelin’s eyes flickered open, and he stared without seeing anything around him. His hand reached out, questing in the empty air as if trying to grasp something. He grabbed Iswander’s forearm, clutched him desperately. His sudden grin chilled Iswander to the core.
“My mind is filled with colors! Thoughts that not even the verdani could hold . . .” His voice rattled as he drew a long breath. “I can see eons in my head, and I hear the voice of God. Or maybe it’s God’s God.”
Iswander frowned at the medical team. “He’s having hallucinations. Do what you can for him.”
His son Arden hurried into the hangar, worried about his tutor. “Is he all right? Will he recover?”
“I think he suffered a brain injury,” Iswander said. “We don’t know yet if he’ll be able to teach you anymore.”
Later, Iswander met with Pannebaker and three of his crew chiefs in the conference chamber. “I want to know how dangerous those flashes are. I can’t afford any more stupid accidents like what happened to the green priest.”
One of the crew chiefs called up data and displayed it for the meeting. “Here’s a record of the flashes over the past several weeks. We’re draining a substantial number of bloaters, so the cluster is significantly smaller, yet other outlier bloaters seem to be drifting in from deep space. The frequency of the flashes is increasing.”
“Could it be some response to our extraction operations?” asked a second chief. “As if the bloaters are alarmed . . . or in pain?”
Iswander frowned. “They’re just gas bags. Are you implying it’s some kind of distress signal?”
The second chief looked embarrassed. “I wasn’t implying anything. Just asking a question.”
Alec Pannebaker called up his own projection that charted the path of the bloater cluster and showed how it had been accelerating toward the distant star system. “Maybe the cluster is growing more active as it gets closer to that sun.”
As if she had won a prize, Elisa Enturi showed off her son when she returned to the bloater-extraction field. She held the boy’s shoulder as she led him into the admin module. “This is Seth. He’ll be staying here. I’ll make sure he doesn’t get in the way.”
Iswander nodded, glad to have Elisa back. “I’m pleased everything worked out for the best. Any problems?”
“None whatsoever. And Seth is glad to be with us now.”
The boy nodded without any noticeable enthusiasm, but he did seem fascinated by the cluster of bloaters and all the extraction operations. He tried to get a better look through one of the windowports, but Elisa held him close.
“I’ve seen the bloaters before,” Seth said. “My dad and I found the first ones.” His comment provoked a sharp glance from his mother.
Iswander watched her. Without a doubt, Elisa was his best employee, but she had been focused on family problems for some time, her emotions erratic: angry with Garrison, then hurt because she thought he and her son were dead, then indignant when she learned she’d been deceived. Well, now that she had the boy in her safekeeping, Iswander hoped Elisa could concentrate on her work and devote herself to the ekti operations. He needed her.
To help, he called his family into the admin module and introduced them to the boy. Maybe Elisa’s son and Arden would become friends. “This is Seth Reeves, our newest member of the team. Make him feel welcome.”
Londa seemed delighted. “We’ll take care of him. It will be so good for Arden to have someone close to his own age here.” She gave Seth a warm smile. “This will be different from Academ, but Arden enjoys it here. You will, too.”
Now that she had gotten what she wanted, Elisa seemed anxious to get back to work. “And you and I can be together, Seth. I’ll see you after my shift.”
Elisa followed Iswander to the medical module. Aelin lay on a bunk, connected to monitoring apparatus. The two staff doctors wore expressions of consternation.
Aelin’s face looked gaunt; his green skin had a more ashen color. His mouth hung slack, but it seemed to wear a hint of a smile, as if he understood something mysterious and incomprehensible. His eyes were open, staring, and glassy. But as soon as the two entered, he became lucid. He turned his head to face Iswander. “I have seen it!”
Elisa was skeptical. “What have you seen?”
The green priest jerked his head toward her. “Wonders that even my soul can’t contain. I hear the thundering thoughts.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “And I still see flashes behind my eyes, inside my soul.” Aelin tried to sit up, but the doctors had put him in restraints.
Iswander frowned. The poor man was likely insane—but the accident was the green priest’s own fault, not something the industrialist could be blamed for.
“I have a warning for you, Mr. Iswander! You are spilling the blood of the cosmos—and the shadow is coming.” Aelin struggled against his restraints.
Both doctors were worried. “We don’t know what to do, sir. Our treatment options are limited.”
The second doctor said, “He should be transferred to a larger medical facility, maybe taken back to Theroc where green priests can care for him.”
Iswander shook his head. “No, he stays here. Do what you can.” He paused, then added, “And you’d better sedate him. He’s delirious.”
ONE HUNDRED AND SIX
OSIRA’H
Osira’h awoke in terror. From the raw burning in her throat, she realized she must have screamed. In her mind’s eye she could still see the echoes of blackness, the images burned into her thoughts.
She sensed the strands of thism throughout the universe, a glorious web that strengthened and bound the Ildiran people—but in her nightmare it had become a tangled tapestry. She saw intersection points, frayed and weak strands beginning to turn black, darkening, tightening.
The Shana Rei could strike in more insidious ways than the gigantic hex cylinders they had used at Plumas. . . .
Before going to bed, Osira’h had spent an enjoyable hour with Prince Reyn. He was having a good day and seemed strong and engaged. Even though Osira’h watched him closely, she barely saw any signs of his illness.
They sat with a dozen quiet and fascinated Ildirans in a storyteller’s bowl, a small sunken theater ringed with seats. In the center, a mound of rough-cut orange fuel crystals glowed, shedding warm light on the audience.
Rememberer Dyvo’sh and the human scholar Anton Colicos told a story they had recently resurrected from the document crypts. Taking turns, Anton Colicos and Dyvo’sh talked about a small Ildiran splinter colony on Carii, which was due to have an eclipse. Ildiran astronomers had staked out a camp in the path of totality, an hour’s flight from the main city, ready to take measurements as the planet’s moon slid in front of the sun. The total eclipse lasted less than four minutes.
In that brief span of time, the Shana Rei emerged—manifesting out of the shadow and swallowing the astronomers. Even though the scientist kith remained in contact with the Carii colonists in the main city, the thism strands were knotted, then severed. And when the eclipse was over, everything in their camp was gone: astronomers, equipment, and records. The trees themselves were black and lifeless. . . .
The tale chilled the audience in the storyteller’s bowl. The story reminded Osira’h of her brother Gale’nh, all alone aboard the dark-shrouded Kolpraxa.
Reyn leaned close to her and said, “If the rememberers are searching old records to find useful information about the Shana Rei, what can we learn from that story to help us defend ourselves?”
“Maybe the lesson is that we should avoid eclipses.”
When they each retired to their quarters, Osira’h drifted off to sleep, thinking warm thoughts of how much she enjoyed being with Reyn. She had hoped to have dreams of Reynald. Instead, the blackness struck at Osira’h through her dreams.
She heard shouts and pounding at her chamber door
before guard kithmen forced themselves inside. Still shuddering, she climbed to her feet, trying to push away the nightmare. One of the guards looked around, crystal sword drawn. “We heard you cry out—are you in danger?”
The words caught in her throat. Maybe they were all in danger, Ildirans and humans. But apparently the others hadn’t felt it. She drew a deep breath before answering. She gestured around her, trying to sound aloof. “I’m unharmed. As you can see, there’s no threat.”
Rod’h burst into the room, his eyes flashing. “Osira’h?” He was normally haughty and confident, but she saw a gray tinge of fear on his face. With her enhanced telepathy, she could feel his thoughts reverberating through the thism.
“Yes, I felt it,” she said. “I saw darkening strands of thism. I saw the network tangled and broken.” She thought about the perfectly normal Ildirans who had suddenly turned on her mother during the birthday procession, trying to assassinate her.
“I think the Shana Rei are poisoning the thism,” Rod’h said. “They’re trying to attack Ildirans from the inside, by striking at the very thing that binds us together.” He straightened. “It may be up to us again, dear sister, to find a way to fight it.”
“I’m worried about Gale’nh,” she said. “If he felt it too . . .”
The guard kith accompanied them as they hurried to their brother’s quarters in the Prism Palace. Gale’nh was awake. Ever since his rescue from the Kolpraxa, he had been wan and pale, but now he looked full of dread.
Their warrior sister Muree’n stood next to him, breathless. “I came to protect Gale’nh. I had the nightmare too. I knew something was wrong.”
Osira’h looked at her siblings. “We must see the Mage-Imperator—all of us.”
They found Jora’h in his contemplation chamber where the walls of crimson crystal let in a dark and brooding light. Blazers illuminated the private chamber, but the Mage-Imperator was alone with his thoughts, his concerns.
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