Anton nodded. “Yes, that’s what I thought. The vault is filled with meticulous records, years and years worth of research, designs, tests, data. When the Shana Rei were defeated, a later Mage-Imperator buried all that information, assuming it was too frightening and no longer relevant. But we can use it. I’ve got five rememberers in the vault now, cataloguing and sorting.”
“The CDF could use copies of everything,” General Keah said. “Let’s get up to speed even while we build an arsenal of those sun bombs.”
“But how were you able to defeat the Shana Rei before?” King Peter asked.
Anton said, “The Ildirans formed an alliance with the faeros. A Mage-Imperator had resorted to extreme measures to get their attention.”
“How do you get the attention of the faeros?” General Keah asked. “By banging on pots and pans?”
Jora’h answered in a grim voice. “Mage-Imperator Xiba’h burned himself alive, and his dying scream through the thism was enough to draw them.”
“Oh.”
“I can summon the faeros—I think.”
Peter turned to see an exotic young woman enter the chamber.
“Sometimes I communicate with them.”
Nira smiled and said, “Our daughter Osira’h.”
Prince Reyn accompanied the young woman, and Estarra sat up straighter when she saw her son. Peter thought Reyn looked tired and weak.
Osira’h joined them at the discussion table. “I can open myself up to them. Maybe they will remember the Shana Rei from before.”
Her halfbreed brother Rod’h entered the chamber, close on his sister’s heels. “I could summon the faeros as well. I have the same power.”
He seemed to be challenging Osira’h, but she smiled at him. “We can do it together.”
When the Mage-Imperator declared a break so they could be served a meal, Reyn came over to his parents wearing an uncertain smile. Osira’h walked close beside him, brushing against his arm.
Estarra gave her son a hug and drew back. “We’ve missed you, Reyn . . . but you don’t look well. Are you tired?”
Peter had noticed a lack of energy in his son for the past several months, but his weariness now looked more pronounced. “I think you’re homesick. We need to get you back to Theroc, where you can recover.”
Reyn seemed nervous, as if he had something important to say, and Osira’h gave him an encouraging nod.
“I’m not homesick . . . and it’s not caused by anything here. I’ve already seen the best medical experts on Theroc, Earth, and Ildira. I wanted a different answer before I said anything, but now . . .”
Osira’h leaned closer to him.
Reyn said, “I’ve got something to tell you.”
ONE HUNDRED AND TEN
ORLI COVITZ
Orli’s will to survive had nothing to do with logic. The Onthos plague raged through her body, and new dark blotches appeared on her skin. Her fever remained high, and she felt as if a halo of mist surrounded her, closing in on her peripheral vision so that she saw only a clear central tunnel with blurred edges. She was nauseated most of the time. Her hands shook so badly that she could barely operate the Proud Mary’s controls.
But now the ship rested at the base of a large crater in a tumbling asteroid.
Orli knew she couldn’t possibly have more than a few days left. She also knew that Tom Rom was probably still hunting for her. She began to doubt she would ever find a chance to transmit the vital historical and biological records that she kept.
Given that, logically, she should just self-destruct the ship right now, erase all trace of herself and the disease—and DD. But Orli was a fighter, and she was still alive. She couldn’t bear the thought of her loved ones spending the rest of their lives wondering what had happened to her—Rlinda Kett, even Matthew (although he was a turd, she had to find a way to send word). Not to mention the treasure trove of scientific data about the Onthos and about the plague itself. It might give researchers some starting point if the disease ever appeared again.
And . . . she wanted to live.
“One step at a time,” she said. “We don’t have many options, DD, but we’re not going anywhere unless we get our engines repaired.” She turned to the Friendly compy. “You downloaded all that information about repairing starship engines. Time to put it to use. Get the toolkit and go outside to work on the external damage.”
The isolated crater had high walls, and the Proud Mary should be stable and undetectable, at least long enough for DD to finish. For the past day Orli had been too tired and weak to do anything but rest, hide, and wait. But her condition was growing worse, and she knew that if she didn’t do something now, she would lose her last chance.
Carrying the toolkit, the compy looked like an undersized but eager repairman. He went to the airlock hatch. “I have the complete maintenance record for the Proud Mary. I hope I don’t let you down, Orli.”
“You’ll do fine, DD.”
After he cycled through the airlock chamber, Orli remained in the padded pilot’s chair that had seen so many years of use. The worn chair enfolded her like a comfortable blanket. She lost track of time . . . and was startled when DD reentered through the airlock. On the chronometer, she saw that the better part of an hour had passed.
“The damage is extensive, Orli. According to our inventory, I have the spare parts I need to make the Proud Mary function, but I will have to disassemble the outer casing and remove part of the hull. It will take me several hours. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather have me stay here to keep you company?”
“I’d love your company, DD, but you’re the only one who can fix the engines.”
“Yes, I am.” He fetched the requisite components, then cycled back through the airlock.
Orli struggled with the pain inside her. When she was a little girl, she and her father had lived from hand to mouth, chasing one get-rich-quick scheme after another. She had survived a Klikiss invasion and black robot massacres, and in the years afterward she’d made a good name for herself, built a business rescuing unwanted compies, married a man who should have been perfect for her. But life was messy and had taken her in unexpected directions. Rlinda Kett had given her a chance to start fresh, but in spite of all that, Orli was going to die alone in a crater on an unnamed asteroid in an uncatalogued system.
No, not alone. She still had DD.
Orli dozed again, and she awoke, confused. Her body felt cramped and achy, and she realized that DD’s voice had roused her, but the cockpit remained empty. The Proud Mary was quiet and dim, conserving energy.
DD’s urgent voice burst across the comm speakers. “Orli! He found us. His ship landed nearby, but our engines are dismantled, and we can’t escape!”
As if swimming through a soup of black static, Orli forced herself into awareness. She felt dizzy. Her head pounded. “What do you mean he—”
Through the windowport she saw Tom Rom’s ship on the crater floor not far away. A tall figure in a silvery environment suit already strode toward her ship. In the asteroid’s low gravity, he seemed to dance, light-footed as he crossed the distance in large bounds.
“Orli, he’s almost to the hatch! I transmitted a stern warning for him to stay away, but he doesn’t respond.”
Orli doubted stern warnings would have any effect.
She felt so groggy, so helpless, and when she shook her head the throbbing only grew more intense. Given the option, she would have detonated the Proud Mary now, but the ship wasn’t designed with a series of scuttling charges. “DD, you have to stop him. Do anything you can. Anything. You know what’ll happen if he gets what he wants.”
“I will try, Orli.” The compy sounded panicked. “Margaret and Louis Colicos gave me the same instructions when the Klikiss robots were attacking . . . but I failed there.”
“So now you’ve had practice. Don’t fail this time.”
The Friendly compy was only four feet tall, and he was not a combat model. He had no weapons, except perh
aps his repair tools, but strict compy programming would preclude him from harming a human. He could not attack Tom Rom.
Orli forced herself out of the pilot’s seat, swayed, and fought back the dark unconsciousness fluttering around her. If her ship had possessed weapons, she could have opened fire on the other landed vessel, maybe vaporized the spacesuited figure, but she didn’t have that option.
Outside the windowport, DD stepped in front of the man, looking small and nonthreatening, but very brave. He refused to move. Tom Rom grabbed the compy, lifted him, and simply tossed him like a lightweight ball all the way across the crater. DD flailed as he flew, tumbling, until he hit the steep far wall.
A few moments later Orli heard the Proud Mary’s outer airlock activating.
DD’s voice came over the comm. “I tried to stop him, Orli. I am hurrying back to you as fast as I can.”
The ship’s outer airlock hatch sealed, and the chamber began to fill with air.
Orli applied a voice-command lock that scrambled the controls, hoping that would prevent Tom Rom from entering the main cabin. She staggered back to the captain’s locker and rummaged around. Everything was in disarray, the contents tossed about during her evasive maneuvers. Toward the bottom of the paraphernalia, she found the small hand jazer.
The airlock controls hummed with the frenetic flashing of lights. Tom Rom was scrambling them somehow.
As the heavy door slid open, Orli faced him with the weapon, trying to hold it steady, but the discharge tip wavered in a jagged pattern. She set the intensity to Stun. As Tom Rom’s suited form stepped out of the airlock, she fired.
The jazer blast crackled around his silvery suit. He paused, then continued forward. She fired twice more, but his suit insulated him. Orli increased the intensity to Kill level—which still didn’t stop him.
“Stay away!” she cried.
Tom Rom reached her, and she fired one more ineffective shot, even though he was less than a meter away. He grasped the hand jazer and wrenched it from her grip. Orli was too weak and shaky to resist.
He took the weapon in his gloved hand, glanced at it, and adjusted the setting back down to Stun. He turned the hand jazer on Orli. She had nearly depleted the power pack, but even the minimal Stun blast was enough to send her toppling backward into blackness. . . .
She didn’t remain unconscious for long—but it was long enough. When she struggled back to wakefulness, Tom Rom was already wrapping up his work. Her arm was sore and bleeding. From the inside of her right elbow, he had withdrawn several glass vials of her infected blood. Still in his protective suit, he packed the vials away and sealed them into an insulated pouch at his waist.
She struggled to focus her thoughts, touched her bleeding arm. She meant to scream at him, but her words came out only as a hoarse gasp. “You bastard. You know how deadly that plague is. Why are you doing this?” She felt a sick horror. “Are you a terrorist? Are you going to turn this loose on whole populations?”
He turned the curved front of his helmet toward her. Through the reflective coating, she could see only a ghost of his features. His brow furrowed. “No. I don’t intend to release the plague at all. We will use every possible decontamination and quarantine procedure. Rest assured, it is completely safe. There was no need for you to be so concerned.”
“Then why?” Orli said.
“Because my employer is interested in it as part of her collection.”
For a moment Orli thought he was going to thank her or wish her well, but he made no such insipid statements. Now that he’d gotten what he wanted, Tom Rom had no further use for her. He went to the airlock and cycled back through.
ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN
GARRISON REEVES
After refueling the Prodigal Son at Newstation, Garrison followed the coordinates Jess and Cesca had given him. He couldn’t understand why Elisa would take Seth so far out into uninhabited space, with no nearby planets or moons. That wasn’t like her. What possible operations could Lee Iswander have established out here?
Garrison had heard of the man’s lucrative new stardrive fuel business. The CDF had purchased a great deal of ekti-X for their fleet, provided by Iswander Industries. He had paid attention only because of Iswander’s name.
When the Prodigal Son arrived at the obscure coordinates, Garrison looked around in astonishment at another grouping of bloaters, just like the cluster he and Seth had discovered out in the emptiness between the stars. Like the one that had exploded in such a titanic detonation . . .
What did Elisa—and Lee Iswander—want with the strange nodules?
As he eased the ship nearer to the cluster, he noticed the artificial lights. At higher magnification he spotted the dispersed industrial complex: vessels, tankers, modular habitats, loading platforms, pumping facilities—all bearing the logo of Iswander Industries.
He remembered how the bloaters had exploded, the flame front, the shock wave, the devastating fire. The drifting sacks were filled with some volatile substance . . . and now an industrial operation had been set up here?
Garrison narrowed his eyes and put the pieces together as he saw pumping stations connected to the bloater spheres like giant mosquitoes. Beyond the lights of the complex he saw drifting deflated membranes. Elisa must have told the industrialist about the bloaters after the Sheol catastrophe, and he had built a factory complex out here where no one could find him.
Lee Iswander had found a tremendous source of stardrive fuel.
And Elisa had brought Seth to another dangerous place. Hadn’t she learned? Hadn’t Iswander learned?
As anger welled up inside him, Garrison flew in toward the operations. Even if Iswander had taken a lesson from Sheol and improved his safety systems, Garrison didn’t want his son there. Not with Elisa, not with Iswander, not with those explosive things. . . .
He flew in close before announcing himself. By now, someone must have picked up his ship, but there was substantial traffic in the vicinity, and the Prodigal Son was a typical cargo vessel. In fact, the ship’s ID beacon might still be in the Iswander Industries database, since he’d taken the craft from the Sheol yards.
He flipped on the comm. “This is Garrison Reeves, and you have something of mine.” He didn’t care about the bloaters or the ekti-extraction operations, and he doubted Lee Iswander would fight to keep a ten-year-old boy in his operations. Elisa liked the idea of winning, of taking the boy away from him, but business operations would preoccupy her. Garrison hoped he could just take his son and leave—but he knew that hope was naïve.
He heard a buzz of garbled chatter on the comm, scrambled transmissions. Five ships raced toward him, closing in and surrounding him. A voice came over his comm. “This is Iswander Security. Mr. Reeves, you are trespassing.”
“I didn’t see any signs posted,” he said. “And you have my boy.”
After another flurry of chatter, he recognized the voice of Alec Pannebaker. “Garrison, we wish you hadn’t come here. I have orders from Mr. Iswander to bring you to the admin module.”
“Good, that’s where I wanted to go anyway.”
The ships flanking him were not exactly security vessels. Garrison doubted they were even armed, but they made sure he flew toward the docking module. Garrison realized, with a pang of sadness, they were the same design of modules he had bought from Iswander for his clan’s use at Rendezvous, the ones Olaf Reeves had discarded.
After he landed the Prodigal Son inside a bay, his heart was pounding. Lee Iswander stood there waiting for him. He wore business attire, kept his hands at his sides; his expression was more disappointed than angry, as if this was the last problem he wanted to deal with today. “Mr. Reeves, I see you’re well. You must be relieved that you got away from Sheol before the disaster happened.”
“I’d be more relieved if you had listened to me back there,” he said. “More than fifteen hundred people would still be alive.”
“I can’t argue with your point, Mr. Reeves. Believe me, I’ve
suffered from it, and my conscience still weighs heavy on me, but we have to move on. You saw these ekti-extraction operations. I have implemented thorough safety procedures, believe me.”
“I’m not here about your operations. I came to retrieve my son. I intend to take him and leave.”
Iswander frowned. “I’m afraid that may be problematic.”
Garrison felt suddenly cold. “Why? Has something happened to Seth?”
“Not the boy, Mr. Reeves—it’s you. It’s this place. It’s what you’ve seen. Follow me.”
Garrison followed him through a connector into the main admin module. The first thing he saw was Seth standing with an older boy and a woman he believed to be Iswander’s wife.
Seth’s face lit up. “Dad! I hoped you would come!” He bounded off the deck and shot toward Garrison in the minimal gravity. Iswander’s wife reached out, trying to grab Seth’s shoulder, but he slipped away. He careened into his father like a cannonball.
Garrison wrapped his arms around his son. They both caught their balance.
“As you can see, the boy is unharmed,” Iswander said.
Garrison held on to his son. They were going to have to pry Seth away from him. “A child belongs with his family—in a safe place.”
Elisa swept onto the admin deck like a thunderstorm. “How dare you suggest I would hurt my son!”
“Good,” Iswander said with an odd smile. “I see we’re fundamentally in agreement.” He looked at her as if he expected her to agree automatically.
“You should never have found this place, Garrison,” Elisa said. “We can’t let you leave.”
Iswander was trying to calm them both. “No need to be melodramatic, Elisa. I’m interested in a clear solution. There’s got to be an answer that works best for everybody, so let’s solve this. Garrison has shown himself to be a good worker, and he is technically still an employee of Iswander Industries. He could stay here, work the ekti operations, live in our habitation module—separate quarters, of course, unless you manage to reconcile?” She made a low angry noise. “And that way you can both be with your boy. No need to tear a family apart.”
The Dark Between the Stars Page 54