The Dark Between the Stars

by Kevin J. Anderson

  It wasn’t a black liquid—just an oily intangible substance that filled the air, pouring from the dead body. It engulfed another assistant who collapsed on the smooth floor, thrashing and twitching. The remaining two assistants rushed toward the hatch, but the interlock seals had already snapped into place.

  The blackness swarmed over them, suffocating them. The room continued to fill with a roiling black shadow cloud. Gale’nh howled, covered his face with one arm.

  Nira let out an astonished cry, and Jora’h pulled her away from the observation window just as an exterior armor plate dropped into place, shielding them before the incineration blazers released an instant vaporization burst.

  The light of a thousand suns swallowed the autopsy room. Even the hair-fine line of light that showed through the window covering was searing enough to blind him momentarily.

  Jora’h could only hope that the emergency system had been swift and intense enough to cleanse that horrific darkness in time.

  ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-FOUR

  SHAREEN FITZKELLUM

  Even on the isolated, tide-swirled planet of Kuivahr, they heard about the Shana Rei attacking Theroc. The black stain vomiting out of Golgen’s clouds had only been one of the first encounters with the creatures of darkness. Shareen was not looking forward to another one.

  When a Kett Shipping vessel arrived to take a load of kirae to Ildira (including one special bottle designated for the Mage-Imperator himself), the pilot told about the massive shadow cloud that had appeared at Theroc. As the crates of kirae were loaded aboard his ship, the pilot seemed uneasy about going to Ildira as well. “Odd reports coming out of there, too—mass hysteria, mob violence. The Ildirans say it’s also the work of the Shana Rei.”

  Shareen remembered the quicksilver form of the hydrogue that had appeared on the Golgen skymine with blackness welling up inside its body, and how the shadow itself had flooded through the clouds of the gas giant. “Sounds like we were lucky to get away from Golgen when we did.”

  “We lost a whole skymine, by damn! I wouldn’t call that lucky,” Del Kellum said. “Except I’m lucky that you’re all here with me now.”

  Her father added, “I have no interest in a galactic war. Done that already.”

  While Toff devoted his days to racing around in mudskimmers, Shareen and Howard worked in the distillery. They had already made improvements to increase production and shorten the fermentation time, but otherwise they didn’t have specific job assignments yet—this wasn’t exactly the skymine work-study routine Howard had signed up for.

  Shareen enjoyed his company, though, and he didn’t get tired of her ideas. Howard turned to her with a serious expression. “You have some very thought-provoking concepts.”

  “Then why are you so quiet after I tell you about them? You don’t say that much.”

  “Because I’m thinking about them. That’s what thought-provoking means.”

  They sat together on the outside upper deck under the cloudy skies, dangling their legs several stories above the muddy water. Del came out to join them, letting Marius Denva and other line supervisors handle the operations.

  “Thought I’d find you here.”

  “Are we that predictable?” Shareen asked.

  “No, I just looked everywhere else.” Del made a great effort easing himself down and adjusting his legs precariously close to the edge, but he seemed comfortable enough. He gazed out toward the horizon in silence, which was unusual for him. Shareen didn’t break the spell, and all three of them just sat thinking, listening.

  Del finally spoke up. “I’ve seen enough of the Spiral Arm, operated facilities on half a dozen planets, served as Speaker for the Roamer clans. There’s so much out there . . . but for me, this distillery is just enough. There was a time when my Shareen and I had plans to operate skymines on different gas giants. We were going to invest in a luxury spaceliner that would take tourists to the most amazing places—and we’d charge them through the nose each step of the way. She and I even talked about what we’d do when we retired together.”

  Shareen saw tears sparkling in his eyes, and when he took a deep breath she heard a slight hitch in his throat. “Even if we didn’t retire, I still thought we’d be together. Sometimes the universe rises up and bites you right in the butt.”

  She had heard many stories about her grandfather’s lost love Shareen Pasternak. It sounded like a truly epic romance, and she wondered if Del had exaggerated a little, but she was glad he had those stories and those memories, anyway. Coming back to himself, he looked at his granddaughter and reached over to tousle her hair.

  “You two deserve more than spending your best years here. You’re too important for this. I expect great things from you, Shareen.”

  She didn’t know what to say to that, except to thank him.

  Howard included himself as well. “We’ll do our best with the opportunities we have, sir.”

  “That’s the problem right now—not many opportunities here. That has to change. I’ve already called in a few favors for you.” He drew a deep satisfied breath, then made quite a production of getting back to his feet. “I’ll have some news tonight at dinner—it’s a surprise.”

  Shareen knew she was supposed to be excited, and she wondered what sort of odd scheme her grandfather had come up with.

  Clan Kellum ate their meals family style, and Howard was considered an adopted member of the family. He sat next to Shareen as they shared whatever seafood stew or shellfish concoction the commissary sent over.

  Patrick took care of feeding Rex, who played with his food and jabbered about each item. Toff talked about the adventures he’d had (which sounded like the same thing he did every day, but Shareen had long ago learned how to tune out her pesky brother).

  Zhett served herself and passed the pot down to Howard, while Del took his place at the head of the table. The big man cleared his throat and called them to attention. “I want you to know I’ve figured out what’s best for my granddaughter.”

  Zhett bit her tongue with a visible effort.

  “She needs something more challenging than this distillery has to offer. At the Golgen skymine she could have met her potential, taken over a major clan business, but not here. It’s not grand enough for her. You know where she belongs?” Del looked over at Shareen.

  “Do you want me to guess?” she asked.

  He chuckled. “Shareen—and Howard, of course—belong at Fireheart Station!” He grinned into the sudden silence, waiting for the reaction.

  Patrick ventured, “That’s where Kotto Okiah is working. There could be worse places. Unless she wants to go back to the private school on Earth?”

  “No!” Shareen said quickly.

  Del continued in a rush, not wanting anyone to steal his thunder. “I made arrangements. I’m going to escort Shareen, and Howard—if his parents agree—to Fireheart Station, make sure they arrive safely.” He turned to Zhett. “Meanwhile, my sweet, you and Marius Denva can handle the distillery operations.” He hooked his thumbs in his waistband and waited for someone to hand him a dish of food. “In fact, I may just stay at Fireheart for a while.”

  Zhett remained skeptical. “You’re just handing your distillery over to us, Dad?”

  Del sniffed. “You’re my daughter, and you lost your gainful employment when the Golgen skymine was destroyed. You can handle these operations better than I can.”

  Patrick was too quick to agree. “Sounds like a good deal to me.” He intercepted Rex from throwing food on the deck.

  “Good,” Del said. “It’s decided then.”

  Shareen straightened in her chair. “Wait, nobody bothered to ask me.”

  Her grandfather just rolled his eyes. “Oh? Are you telling me you don’t want to go to Fireheart Station?”

  Shareen looked away, but not before she glimpsed the excitement on Howard’s face. “What I want is to be consulted beforehand.”

  Del said, “All right, then I’m consulting you. You want to
go to Fireheart Station?”

  Shareen grinned as she imagined the giant glowing nebula, the processing stations, the huge experimental superconducting ring that Kotto Okiah was building, all the special films bathed in stellar radiation to be used in power blocks . . . and a thousand other innovative scientific projects that she hadn’t even heard of yet.

  “Absolutely,” she said.

  “Then you two better pack up. I’m ready to take you right away.”

  ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-FIVE

  EXXOS

  Sealed inside the entropy bubble after the Shana Rei retreat from Theroc, Exxos and his black robots assessed their losses. Though each of them had synchronized their memory cores to a stable parallel with Exxos, the rate of attrition was highly disturbing. So many ships had been destroyed.

  A thousand Klikiss robots had hidden in the ice moon of Dhula to wait for the return of their comrades, but that had not happened. They had suffered setback after setback in what should have been a glorious victory. The universe itself seemed to want to destroy them. Since their reemergence, Exxos had lost three quarters of his robots. As far as he knew, these were the last Klikiss robots in existence.

  Accidentally encountering the Shana Rei might be their greatest opportunity, or their ultimate devastation. Now the black robots were trapped among them, allies or prisoners . . . depending on how well Exxos could convince the creatures of darkness. The Shana Rei were insane.

  Now, as the shadow creatures retreated into the folds of the universe, Exxos could sense the fury and accompanying agony of the Shana Rei, and he knew that he was about to lose more of his comrades. No doubt about it. He hoped at least some of them would survive. And himself, at all costs.

  Exxos had forged a dangerous alliance with the Shana Rei—it had seemed the only way to survive—and now the robots could not escape. At Theroc, the Shana Rei had insisted on killing the planet with their nightshade, while they remained at a safe distance from the still-formidable worldforest. That was much too time-consuming! Exxos and his robots were ready to attack any vestige of humans anywhere, and would have preferred a more direct and active role in destroying the world and the trees. But the Shana Rei had not been willing to engage in outright battle against the verdani. The worldforest was too powerful.

  With the eclipse darkening and the landscape and sentient trees beginning to weaken and wither, the robots had satisfied themselves with destroying numerous human vessels: battleships, small fighters, larger cruisers. Exxos was able to test new modifications that the Shana Rei had implemented when they manifested the new robot ships.

  Theroc should have died in the dark, thereby extinguishing part of the shrill agony the Shana Rei experienced from the verdani. The robots would have moved ahead with their own extermination agenda.

  Exxos had never expected such a crushing defeat.

  The Confederation military had caused no serious harm to the Shana Rei, and even the verdani battleships were not strong enough to tear apart the nightshade, but the faeros and the Ildiran sun bombs tore apart the Shana Rei’s plans and forced a full retreat. The creatures of darkness abandoned the matter they had ripped into existence, and their gigantic hex ships were heavily damaged.

  The agony of the Shana Rei was now like jabbering madness, and Exxos could barely stand it. They lashed out, making indescribable sounds. And they needed something to blame.

  “Your failure!” the nearest inkblot said. “You robots are not as powerful as you promised. The tree mind fought back, and now our pain is greater.”

  Three black robots drifting in the emptiness of the entropy bubble were whisked upward, twirled about, and slowly ripped apart, dismantled piece by piece until they were nothing more than atoms.

  The thunderous shadow voice continued. “And now the faeros have been awakened and turned against us—the fire that defeated us before!”

  More black robots were separated from the group and surrounded by entropy bubbles. Exxos could still view his hapless comrades, but all transmission and communication cut off as soon as their bubbles sealed. The Shana Rei collapsed the entropy bubbles, and the robots winked out of existence.

  They intended to erase all of the robots, one by one. “We are your allies!” Exxos insisted. “Without us, the Shana Rei would fight alone.” But he knew his bluff had failed.

  “You created great pain,” said the pulsing black blot. “Additional pain.”

  “The humans created great pain. The Ildirans create pain. The verdani and the faeros create pain. We robots are your only allies. Only we understand what is at stake.”

  “You say you understand,” the Shana Rei said, and the central eye glowed brighter. “But you do not feel our pain. If you fail, we will make your robots feel our agony—a hundredfold!”

  More robots were torn apart in front of Exxos, and he was helpless to prevent it.

  He knew that the Shana Rei were afraid of the tremendous enemy that was awakening in the universe, the mysterious but powerful force that had driven them out of the dark corners of the cosmos.

  Despite his fear, Exxos began to make contingency plans. Perhaps the black robots would have to find this other mysterious enemy, switch sides, and help destroy the Shana Rei.

  If any robots survived at all . . .

  ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-SIX

  ZOE ALAKIS

  Though Tom Rom was so sick he could barely move, he made his way to the quarantine-only airlock at ORS 12. All alone, he cycled through the airlock into the quarantine chamber, while Zoe rushed her handpicked team up to the orbiting laboratory.

  The researchers arrived in full decontamination suits and crowded into the spherical station, twice as many scientists as on Dr. Hannig’s team. Zoe took no chances, wanting her most talented researchers there. All scientists who weren’t assigned to ORS 12 would work on the problem from their own labs. Nothing was a higher priority at Pergamus.

  On the edge of consciousness, using his last strength, Tom Rom gave them a verbal summary of his current physical status. During the trip in the stolen courier ship from Vuoral, he had taken meticulous notes of his symptoms, temperature, blood pressure, and pulse in hopes the data would give them something to work with.

  To buy time, the medical team placed him in an induced coma, used precision robotic arms to take samples, sealed his body into the quarantine module’s coldchamber, and dropped the temperature to bare survival levels. But still the disease progressed. . . .

  Trapped in her sterilized dome on the planetary surface, Zoe felt very alone. She watched the screens, read updates, and insisted that one or more cameras in the ORS be focused on Tom Rom at all times, so she could keep looking at his face.

  He was gaunt, his mahogany skin discolored by hemorrhagic bruises, but since his eyes were closed she tried to believe that he looked peaceful. With every second that passed, she knew he was one step closer to dying.

  She hated the disease. Hated all diseases. Wanted to destroy them. Pergamus was supposed to be her invincible fortress, her arsenal. Now, all the data and samples she had collected, all the sophisticated researchers were being put to the test.

  She had never doubted the dedication of her researchers; she studied each person’s background before offering them employment at Pergamus. But Tom Rom’s illness made her so desperate that she needed to give them additional incentive. She wanted no excuses, only a cure.

  At first, she considered infecting the researchers so they would all live, or all die. Incentive. The advantage would be that they could then discard their cumbersome decontamination suits, which would facilitate easier work. But the progress of the disease was swift, and they would quickly deteriorate. She needed them at their best.

  Instead, she told them that if they failed to find a cure for Tom Rom, she would consider the disease too dangerous even for her most extreme precautions, and she would be forced to destroy ORS 12 with the entire team aboard. She ordered her well-armed sentry ships to stand guard in orbit just in case one
of the scientists found a way to escape the lab sphere.

  The researchers were not overly cheered by her ultimatum, but they continued to work, regardless. Zoe couldn’t tell if they worked with greater intensity once they knew how much was at stake, but she felt better knowing she had done everything possible to encourage them.

  During the interminable wait, Zoe felt as if she herself were dying. Giving in to uncharacteristic nostalgia, she unlocked the old and secret recordings of her journals as a young woman at the watchtower station on Vaconda. She saw images of a younger, but somehow unchanged, Tom Rom working with the specimen-collection teams, helping to repair high windows that had cracked after a furious pelting storm, returning from offworld supply runs, repairing a weather satellite in orbit.

  She found one image of Tom Rom deftly applying ointments and bandages to the numerous small bites she had received when the hummers broke into their tower station and swarmed into the chambers. Her father had been badly injured, but Tom Rom tenderly took care of her first.

  “If it weren’t for you, Tom Rom, I would have died long ago,” she murmured to herself, then sighed. “Probably a hundred times over.”

  There were images of Adam Alakis, too, and she smiled to see her father when he’d been healthy, his eyes alert, his conversation brisk. The pain of losing him to Heidegger’s Syndrome was long healed, the scars faded. Could she ever endure such pain again?

  But Tom Rom was still alive—for now.

  She checked hourly with the team aboard ORS 12, demanding to know what progress they had made. Then she made successive inquiries among the groundside domes where researchers worked on the problem independently, asking for their ideas, their insights. Teams scoured the entire Pergamus database, looking at every disease on record from any planet, trying to match the symptoms and possible effective drugs, but they could do only so much. This plague had originated in the Klikiss race, then mutated to kill Onthos, then humans; very little was comparable in the library of known diseases.