Blood of the Cosmos (66 page)

The small craft flew into the ionized sea, heading toward the curved sections of the enormous torus. Countless nebula workers swarmed like insects over the outer skin, testing power blocks and aligning amplifiers. Kotto scanned a stream of reports that he received on his datapad. “Everything is proceeding nicely. The complete round of final checks might be done in three days, and then we'll see the Big Ring in operation.”

Shareen flew them through the center of the torus like threading a needle and looped around so they could follow the curve, riding the Ring up and around. Howard drank in the details of the construction, but Shareen seemed preoccupied. Kotto thought that something was bothering her. Finally, she blurted out, “Are you absolutely sure about this, sir? We looked at complete copies of your Big Ring plans—Howard and I studied every detail. We ran and reran your calculations.”

Kotto frowned. “But I haven't even released the complete plans.”

“We obtained access to the records, sir,” Howard said. “After we finished the other work you assigned us, we wanted to verify your calculations. Just as an exercise.”

“We think there's something wrong,” Shareen interrupted. “We found no overt errors, but some of the conclusions are iffy. A few anticipated results just don't follow, and we question the assumptions.”

Kotto felt as if he'd been struck, and he couldn't help but react defensively. “I did not give you permission to comb through my work. Besides, I … I didn't put down every detail of my thinking. You must have missed a step.”

Howard sounded apologetic. “We were able to connect the mathematics, sir. After the exercises you gave us, we're familiar with your thought processes, so we figured—”

Kotto looked back and forth between the two young assistants, growing alarmed. “You should not have done that.”

“But we think there's a problem,” Shareen said. “The Big Ring might not work the way you expect it to.”

“I intend to keep an open mind. It is an experiment. We will operate the Ring, look at the results, and then draw our conclusions. We don't need to understand the answers before we run the tests.”

Shareen sounded frustrated. “But we think there's cause for caution. You should reconsider before going into full operation.”

“We can't! Final testing will be complete in three days.” Kotto glanced down at his pad. “And the experiment will proceed as scheduled. I won't hear any more of it from two junior assistants.”

Howard fell into silence. Shareen's cheeks rippled as she clenched her jaw. Obviously stung, she flew away from the Big Ring and headed back toward the docking bay in the main station.

Kotto leaned back in the seat, crossed his arms, and tried to pretend that he was indignant rather than panicked. He didn't want to admit to himself that Shareen and Howard had merely echoed and amplified his own doubts. After such an investment in time, effort, money, and Roamer pride, Kotto simply could not call off the Big Ring test.

But, in a small place deep in the back of his mind, he was afraid that Shareen and Howard were right.

 

CHAPTER

113

ZHETT KELLUM

It was a day remarkably free of clouds for Kuivahr. As Zhett stood with Patrick on the high deck of the distillery platform, she looked up to see both moons close together in the sky.

“Your turn.” Patrick handed her baby Rex, who willingly extended his pudgy hands for his mother to take him. He was old enough to be walking on his own—or running places where he shouldn't go, which made him more of a risk. Fortunately the toddler was still needy and preferred to be held. A low-output antigrav harness kept him tethered to his mother or father, so they could do their work while keeping Rex close.

Zhett sniffed, frowned, and held Rex in front of her, but it wasn't a messy diaper, just the usual stench of the mudflats around the base of the distillery tower. Having spent much of her life aboard drifting cloud harvesters on gas giants, she was accustomed to sour vapors rising from the cloud bands. But she didn't think she'd ever get used to the fishy, iodine odors of this place.

Below, she and Patrick watched cargo being loaded onto a pontoon landing raft: cases of freshly bottled Ooze for personal consumption, as well as large kegs that would be sent to Rlinda Kett's restaurants, their exclusive customer for this particular batch.

The dull buzz of conversation wafted up to them, followed by laughter. Pointing down, Patrick indicated a teenager on a personal waveskimmer circling the pontoon raft. Kristof headed out to meet a group of Ildiran swimmers who were coming in with freshly harvested kelp for the distillery mash tanks. Toff seemed to be teasing the otterlike swimmers, raising rooster tails of water as he circled them. Zhett could see him grinning. The laughter stopped with a splash as one of the Ildirans upended the skimmer, spilling Toff into the water. He came up sputtering and retrieved the skimmer, but he didn't really mind being drenched.

Del Kellum sauntered out onto the deck to join them. “Once our kelpbeer catches on, we're going to need a larger landing raft, by damn. We'll be shipping kegs all across the Spiral Arm. We'll have to increase production, too.”

Zhett said, “I'd rather get rid of our old stockpiles first, Dad. Nobody seems to want the early stuff.”

“Maybe because it still tastes bad,” Patrick said. “We should just dump it into the sea.”

“What, and kill all the kelp?” Zhett teased.

Del sniffed. “It's not bad, it's … classic. Just needs to be aged properly.”

When a small transport ship was loaded on the landing raft, workers sealed the hatches and stepped away so the ship could lift off. On a bright column of vapor, it rose into the unusually clear sky.

Del continued, “Yoder's ship is in orbit, ready to take a full load.”

“He's a month late,” Zhett said.

“Had a bit of a crash-landing incident, nowhere close to a repair facility or spare parts,” Del explained. “But he's back in his routine now.”

Routine
 … that was what this had become. Zhett supposed family life and a successful business on a calm planet was a nice reward in itself. Skymining was in her blood, but thanks to all the ekti-X produced by Iswander Industries, clan Kellum couldn't justify the outrageous expense of rebuilding a cloud harvester, or even buying a cheap secondhand one, like the one Aaron Duquesne had tried to sell them. Under normal circumstances, a new skymine would have taken most of clan Kellum's wealth plus a good chunk of Patrick's inheritance. Right now, the distillery was probably their best bet.

As she held the baby, Zhett wondered if Rex would one day take over the distillery operations, just as she and Patrick had taken over from her father. Toff and Rex could run the operations together, a good business for two brothers.

But it wouldn't be Shareen. Their daughter had a remarkable opportunity working with Kotto Okiah at Fireheart Station. It was going to change the girl's life. Zhett was sure that Shareen had big things in store for her.

The intercom blared, startling them. “Del, Zhett, Patrick! Get to the control deck—right away!” It was Marius Denva, the distillery's operations manager. “You're going to want to see this—on second thought, you probably
don't
want to see it, but you better get here anyway.”

The distillery's upper-level control center was a big open area with screens, systems ops, and a lot of clutter; the distillery didn't actually need a full-fledged command center the way a large skymine did. The workers tended to be casual; unpacked boxes lay around or were stacked in corners.

Right now all the people were staring at the screens. The bearded, gray-haired trader Dando Yoder was transmitting from his ship in orbit. He had a rough squawking voice. “It just appeared! Huge. Black. My systems are all going haywire! Half my screens are down—can't even activate the nav computer.”

Zhett had been expecting some business headache, but what she saw on the screen made her heart turn cold. Patrick groaned. “Not again!”

Rather than sending up geysers of blackness in a gas giant's atmosphere, this time the Shana Rei emerged in orbit above Kuivahr. The dark nebula bled through a tear in the fabric of space, flowing out in an ever-widening pool like spilled ink. Five cylindrical six-sided ships extended from the cloud, showing no running lights or markings whatsoever. They resembled massive obsidian crystals, growing larger as they emerged.

“What am I supposed to do up here?” Yoder said. “I just got my ship repaired, and I don't have weapons for this!”

“You can't fight!” Zhett grabbed the comm. “Just get out of here!” The trader didn't need to be told twice. His ship streaked out of orbit, heading away from the black cloud.

“What the hell do the Shana Rei want
here
?” Patrick asked no one in particular. “We're just a distillery. They can have all the Primordial Ooze they want.”

“I'll be sure to ask for an explanation if we have a chance to chat,” Zhett said.

“Well, we didn't do anything to provoke them at Golgen either, by damn!” Del said.

The hex ships loomed above, as if they meant to crush everyone on Kuivahr. Thin slices detached from the flat ends and fell toward low orbit. A chain of hex plates spun away from all five Shana Rei cylinders and drifted down toward the outer edge of the atmosphere in a blizzard of material. As if carefully guided, one hex plate aligned its edge with a second, then a third. They joined together, coalescing.

Maurice Denva stood by the comm, staring at the screen. “Am I supposed to transmit a surrender or something? Ask for terms?”

“You won't get an answer,” Zhett said.

Hundreds more hex plates spun off, clicked together, and began assembling a barricade, piece by piece by piece.

Patrick looked at her. “We know what's going to happen—no point in waiting and pretending.”

“No point at all,” Zhett agreed, holding on to Rex. “It's time to get out of here.”

 

CHAPTER

114

ROD'H

Surrounded by disorienting blackness and silence, Rod'h felt cold, hungry, and lost. His thoughts were torn open and exposed.

He had not meant to surrender information that would help the creatures of darkness. They interrogated him, tormented him … then did it all over again.

Every last building block of strength, every hidden corner of his personality had been ripped away, and Rod'h struggled to rebuild it. Earlier, the Shana Rei had toyed with Gale'nh, wiped his memories and discarded him on the haunted
Kolpraxa
. But they kept Rod'h so they could do it repeatedly. And when that wasn't enough, they allowed one of the black robots to work on him.

The Shana Rei needed to learn from him—and Rod'h tried to turn it against them. He observed even in his greatest agony. He tried to glean data and draw conclusions by studying their ignorance. The basic things the shadows didn't know might reveal a weakness, a blind spot.

Appalled, he discovered that the Shana Rei considered
life itself
to be the source of pain, that they hated the agony of creation and that their goal was to unmake the universe and then annihilate themselves so they could find solace.

That understanding was in itself frightening. No matter what, there could never be peace with the creatures of darkness. They had to be defeated, Rod'h knew—wiped out utterly, or existence itself would end. But even if he discovered some flaw from this gulf of captivity, some way to fight them, how would he ever convey it to anyone who could respond to it?

The Shana Rei imprisoned Rod'h in an entropy bubble inside one of the enormous hexagonal ships that had been assembled from night and emptiness. Not giving up, he reached out with
thism
, casting threads anywhere in hope that he might find some contact outside. But the shadows caught those threads and used them to spin deeper into the
thism
network like a spreading blight.

The inkblots appeared around him with blazing eyes and maddening voices. “You are our conduit.”

“No!” Rod'h tried to block out his thoughts, but the Shana Rei simply toyed with him, letting him know that they would destroy the
thism
from the inside.

He found himself spinning, screaming, and they penetrated his mind despite the walls he tried to erect. His flesh was healed, but scarred. The black robot's pincers had torn him open, dissected him, and the Shana Rei put him back together again, never letting him die, although he felt and remembered every instant of terrible pain. The robot Exxos could keep doing that endlessly.

Although the Shana Rei wanted to use him as a gateway to infiltrate the
thism
, Rod'h was merely a halfbreed, and his connection to the purely Ildiran telepathic network was not exceptional. Perhaps the creatures of darkness had overestimated him, and when they realized their mistake, they would discard him as they had with Gale'nh … or perhaps they would just let the black robots continue toying with him.

But he was strong in other ways.

During his moment of greatest torment, Rod'h used all of his mental powers, everything the countless training sessions on Dobro had taught him, and reached out for anyone, any
thing
—and for just a flicker of an instant he felt the connection he had experienced only once. A touch of what he had felt at the turbulent star Wulfton. The faeros! He clutched at them like a lifeline, and they
knew
what the shadows were doing to him. He begged the fiery elementals for help, but they snuffed out the mental link and fled.…

Rod'h drifted, and the Shana Rei did what they liked.

When the five hexagonal cylinders emerged from the dark layers beneath space, the Shana Rei allowed the entropy bubble to become transparent, to taunt him. Rod'h could see where they were.