Eternity's Mind (3 page)

At Fireheart Station, Garrison and the Roamer workers have finished constructing Kotto's Big Ring in the middle of the nebula, and it is ready for a full-power test run. Despite Shareen and Howard's reservations, Kotto is anxious for the demonstration. He hopes the Big Ring will be the high point of his already illustrious career. The gigantic ring is activated in the intense flux from the nebula's core stars, but the power escalates, caught in a feedback loop, and the experiment runs out of control. The Big Ring collapses under its own forces with such titanic energy that it tears a hole in the fabric of the universe—like a doorway into another dimension that no one knows how to close.

On Kuivahr, some of Tamo'l's experimental kelp extracts prove effective in treating Prince Reyn, and Osira'h is pleased to see him gaining strength. Tom Rom arrives with the Pergamus data on Reyn's illness in exchange for Tamo'l's research on the misbreeds, which she happily shares.

Then the Shana Rei arrive with their shadow cloud and black robot fighters, to capture the two halfbreeds Osira'h and Tamo'l. In orbit, the Shana Rei send out countless hex plates, building up an opaque shell that begins to grow around Kuivahr. Soon, the entire planet will be swallowed up. Reyn and Osira'h immediately evacuate, joining the fleeing personnel from the Kellum distillery. But because Tamo'l won't leave her misbreeds, Tom Rom helps her get them to the Klikiss transportal, so they can escape to another world.

Inside his entropy bubble prison, Rod'h desperately tries to warn his siblings using his telepathic connection, and just as Tamo'l is about to escape Kuivahr through the transportal—which the misbreeds have just gone through to the planet Gorhum—Rod'h links with her. She is stunned, as the shadows hijack the link. Tom Rom forces Tamo'l through the transportal, but changes the coordinate tile so that they arrive on a different planet, beneath the Roamer complex of Newstation. Behind them, Kuivahr is entirely englobed.

The station attendants at the transportal are surprised to receive the two bedraggled escapees. Tom Rom and Tamo'l hurry to his ship. Curious to know where the strangers came from, the station attendants foolishly open the transportal coordinates back to Kuivahr. A gush of insidious shadow floods out, overwhelming the station. Seeing this as he lifts off in his ship, Tom Rom circles back around and uses all his firepower to destroy the transportal and cut off the shadows. Relieved, he takes Tamo'l away, but she is strangely unresponsive. He doesn't see that she has a dark taint of shadows behind her eyes.…

Adar Zan'nh and Tal Gale'nh race with a large Solar Navy force to defend Kuivahr. They battle the black robot ships while the shell completes itself around Kuivahr. Even though the planet is lost, the Solar Navy unleashes a substantial arsenal of sun bombs and laser cannons. Those weapons damage the Shana Rei and prove devastating to the black robots. Seeing an enemy they can defeat, Adar Zan'nh gives orders to use sun bombs in an all-out effort to wipe out the black robots once and for all. The robots are completely exterminated except for three, which follow the Shana Rei shadow cloud as it retreats into its own dimension. Not victorious, but still alive, the Solar Navy force returns to Ildira, bringing Osira'h, Reyn, and the Kellums from their ordeal.

Hearing news of the tremendous battle against the Shana Rei, mad Designate Rusa'h again demands that Jora'h try to make an alliance with the faeros. When the Mage-Imperator refuses, Rusa'h takes matters into his own hands. Following an example from the Saga of Seven Suns, Rusa'h goes to the top of the Prism Palace and immolates himself under the open sky. As he is burned alive, his agony rages through the
thism
strongly enough to summon the fiery elementals. Mage-Imperator Jora'h and his companions see numerous faeros fireballs gather above the Palace like threatening suns overhead.…

In the dark void after the disastrous battle at Kuivahr, Exxos is in despair. Nearly all of his original robots are gone, a once-invincible swarm of fighters. He cannot possibly succeed now. Almost as an afterthought, the Shana Rei offer to use the dark matter from the Onthos system to create duplicate robots, just as they build battleships. Exxos accepts their offer, and the creatures of darkness oblige by manifesting a million copies of Exxos, and all of the black robots are ready to attack the Spiral Arm.

 

CHAPTER

1

MAGE-IMPERATOR JORA'H

The sky was full of fire.

Crackling balls of flame hovered above the crystalline towers of the Prism Palace. The faeros—elemental entities that lived within stars—had arrived in all their chaotic destructive glory, summoned by the agony of a madman who believed the fiery creatures would protect the Empire against the Shana Rei.

Mage-Imperator Jora'h stood among his awestruck people in the plaza, looking up at the entities that blazed brighter than the seven suns. He wished he had been able to stop Rusa'h from making such a deadly summons. Jora'h could feel the throbbing terror that emanated from his people … terror that he himself felt, but he quashed it so the reverberations would not tremble out through the
thism.
Every Ildiran could feel what their Mage-Imperator felt, and now more than ever Jora'h had to feel strong, brave, confident.

It seemed impossible.

Jora'h had led the Empire through many disasters, including the previous invasion when the faeros had destroyed cities, incinerated countless people. And Rusa'h had just called them back, blithely assuming the Mage-Imperator could control and guide them against the creatures of darkness.

The fireballs clustered high in the Ildiran sky, but even here down in the Foray Plaza Jora'h could feel the blistering heat. Many people had fled into buildings, while others gathered outside to share their strength with Jora'h, a strength that he sorely needed.

Beside him, his consort Nira shuddered but controlled herself. She grasped his hand. “We have to do something before they attack.”

Their daughter Osira'h, who had once controlled the faeros at the end of the Elemental War, said, “Rusa'h's death-agony summons has made them listen—for the first time.” She shook her head, still staring upward. “Rod'h and I tried to ask for their help, but the faeros fled. We cannot control them. They are terrified of the Shana Rei.”

Her friend Prince Reynald of Theroc also stood close, along with the Kellums, a Roamer family rescued from the planet Kuivahr. The refugees had come here to be safe from the Shana Rei, but now they might all be wiped out by a different enemy.

The faeros pulsed in the sky, flames crackling around their incandescent cores. Waiting. Jora'h stared at the fireballs until his eyes ached. He knew that mad Rusa'h had called them here for
him.
“They are waiting for me. I have to go.”

“But I am the one who can communicate with them,” Osira'h interrupted. “Let me do it.”

Alarmed, Prince Reynald grabbed her arm. “It's too dangerous.”

She shook her head, and her face was drawn. “It is
all
too dangerous! But we have to survive.”

“How will the Empire survive, unless I can make this work?” Jora'h said, exuding a confident determination he did not feel. “The faeros are waiting for me, the Mage-Imperator. I will go.”

His heir, Prime Designate Daro'h, stood in the crowd. The faeros had burned his face during their previous conquest of Ildira, and his voice reflected his tension. “They will burn you, Father, steal your soulfire—the
Ildiran
soulfire. That is what they want. They are hungry!”

“No,” Osira'h said, sounding uncertain. “They are … terrified.”

“As we all are.” Jora'h embraced his beloved Nira. “As destructive as the faeros may be, the Shana Rei are worse. They mean to wipe out all life.” He paused. “If there is any chance the faeros will help us, I must be the one to face them. Rusa'h may not have been wrong.”

In his Solar Navy uniform, Tal Gale'nh looked grim, recalling his own recent military battles against the creatures of darkness. His unnaturally pale skin flushed under the blazing heat. “The Shana Rei want to erase the Galaxy—perhaps the universe itself.”

Jora'h stepped away from his loved ones. “If I do not succeed…” He let his words hang for a long moment, before turning to Daro'h. “Then you will become Mage-Imperator sooner than you expected. Lead the Empire well.”

As he strode toward the Palace, he could feel threads of hope from the crowd woven together into a lifeline through the
thism.
Everyone watched him, believed in him … and Jora'h had to believe in himself. He would face the fiery elementals, knowing they shared an even more fearsome enemy.

Entering the Prism Palace, he climbed staircases that brought him to the highest pinnacle. He stepped out onto the wide rooftop that had once held a botanical garden including small worldtrees that Nira herself had planted. The light and heat from the faeros were blinding.

The air crackled, and he sensed the elementals' hot and blazing presence reaching out to him. The air smelled of smoke and death—but not from the elementals. This was where Rusa'h had set the greenhouse on fire and immolated himself amid the burning trees so that his agony issued a summons that even the faeros could not ignore.

As the Mage-Imperator stepped through the crumbling ashes of the greenhouse and past Rusa'h's blackened bones, he called out. “I need your help! We all do. The Shana Rei will destroy us, and they will destroy
you
—unless we fight.”

In ancient history, Mage-Imperator Xiba'h had also allied with the faeros and saved the Empire from the Shana Rei. This time, though, the creatures of darkness were attacking more than just planets. Their black nebulae oozed through space; their hexagonal ships struck the Solar Navy and tore apart colonies, and they were infiltrating the
thism
network itself. Jora'h had felt the darkness inside him, and he had seen possessed Ildiran mobs wreaking bloody havoc. He could not predict or control the shadows, but as the center of the entire
thism
network, Jora'h knew that their taint had reached into him as well.

The swirling faeros dropped closer, their pulsing flames like a wall pressing him down, trying to intimidate him. When he called upon the
thism,
he saw the shadows there. Despite the blazing light of the faeros fire and the seven suns in the Ildiran sky, the Mage-Imperator felt cold inside.

 

CHAPTER

2

CELLI

Like a great polished jewel, the Roamer terrarium dome drifted against the background of ionized gases. The Fireheart nebula was a canvas of color, its gases illuminated by the clump of hot supergiant stars at its core.

Inside the greenhouse, the green priests Celli and Solimar monitored the crops that provided fresh produce for the Roamer workers at Fireheart Station. The two green priests also tended the pair of huge, groaning worldtrees trapped under the dome. Touching one of the nearby branches, Celli stared through the crystal panes, and shielded her eyes from the nebula glare. This place was so different from her home in the worldforest.…

Roamer industrial operations were scattered across the nebula like pebbles in a cosmic stream. Giant scoops harvested rare isotopes and exotic molecules that had been cooked by the central blue supergiant stars. Energy farms captured the solar flux in vast thin films that would be packaged into power blocks.

Fingers brushed Celli's face, and she turned to see Solimar standing close, looking intently at her. He was handsome and well muscled, his head completely hairless like hers, his skin the rich green of the healthiest plants. The two were connected by their thoughts and their love, and their shared concerns. The enormous worldtrees pressed against the curved terrarium ceiling, hunched and stunted, and still growing from the flood of energy that poured in. But the trees had no place to go.

Solimar did not need telink to know Celli's heart. “I can feel them, too. My joints and back ache—and it is their pain, not ours. They want to burst free.”

The worldtrees were part of the verdani mind, a vast interconnected organism that spread across the Spiral Arm. As Celli stroked the gold-scaled bark of a suffering, cramped tree, she felt that these two were more than just insignificant trees like millions of others. “Sometimes I find it hard to breathe. I feel trapped and claustrophobic—for them. The trees know we can't save them.”

When she connected her mind through telink, all other green priests knew her thoughts and concerns. For their sake Celli tried to hide her despondency about the doomed trees, but it did no good. Despite their best efforts, they could think of no way to save them. By now, it was too late. So much else was happening in the Spiral Arm that few people were concerned about two trees.

Celli placed her fingers on a transparent pane, looking out at the expansive nebula, and Solimar placed his hand over hers. “Do you see any change where the Big Ring was?”

She shook her head. “It's still just a giant hole in the universe.”

“Because of the accident, more scientists will come to study that rift. One of them might have an idea of how to help the trees.”

Celli looked at the black gash across the nebula field. “They'll come only if it remains stable. The rift might tear open wider, and the void could swallow Fireheart Station, along with the terrarium dome and our trees. I wonder what's on the other side.”

Kotto Okiah's Big Ring research project, which had taken years to build and cost an immense fortune, had failed catastrophically during its first test. From inside their dome, Celli and Solimar had watched the giant torus collapse, tearing a hole in the fabric of space itself. No one quite understood what had happened, or what sort of threat the gap might pose. The idea sent a chill through Celli's heart.