Eternity's Mind (55 page)

“They're gaining on us, General,” Tait said.

“Maybe we can lock them inside the void somehow,” Shareen suggested. “If we close the doorway into Fireheart, they'll be trapped here.”

Keah wasn't so convinced that would matter. “The shadows can pop in and out of realspace whenever they like. I'm not sure we'd stall them for long.”

“And they're right on our tail, General,” said the first officer.

Adar Zan'nh and his warliners kept firing their laser cannons, barely holding off the Shana Rei. “Our batteries are nearly depleted, General. We must leave here soon.” His transmission was plagued with more static as the entropy closed in.

The rippling aftereffects penetrated even the CDF shields, and at their stations, the
Kutuzov
bridge crew yelled as half of their systems failed. Keah prayed that her flagship wouldn't degenerate into a confusing gasp of malfunctions before they could get back into realspace. “Keep up the pace, Z! Just a little farther. There's a surprise for them right on the doorstep. Shareen just reminded me of it.”

The Shana Rei lunged closer, but at least they didn't launch their black robots inside the void. The hex cylinders were surrounded by a thickening cloud of shadows that had folded into the void, which now extended toward the strike force. One of the lagging warliners tumbled out of control, disoriented, its lights dimming. Ildiran distress signals were swallowed up in a garbled disarray of transmissions.

Ahead in the featureless black emptiness, her navigator suddenly spotted a gash of light hovering in space, a colored flare of diffuse nebula gas that evoked another cheer from the crew. But the angry black hex cylinders careening after them did not seem intimidated.

Adar Zan'nh said, “Perhaps we should block the gate, use the last of our enhanced weapons to prevent the shadows from attacking Fireheart Station.”

Keah steepled her fingers as she sat on the edge of her command chair. “I have another idea, Z. Trust me—if this doesn't work, we can always fight to the death later.”

“I would be glad to have another alternative, General.”

“Twelve sun bombs remaining on the
Kutuzov,
General,” said the weapons officer. “But once they're gone, they're gone.” Dr. Krieger's facilities certainly weren't going to be manufacturing more, and it would take some time before weapons factories elsewhere in the Confederation could pick up the slack.

“We have two more warheads in reserve,” Keah said, “and I want to trigger those first. Keep the rest for a rainy day.” She flashed a hard grin. “Kotto Okiah left them right here for us.”

The CDF ships shot out of the open gateway back into the Fireheart nebula, with the Solar Navy warliners following close behind. The emanating ripples of dark entropy caused one of the Mantas to fail, its systems shutting down—but with its momentum, it continued straight out through the gap.

The
Kutuzov
was there watching, and when the last CDF and Solar Navy ships had rushed out of the void, she activated the standby systems of the two sun bombs Kotto had left on the threshold. As the hex ships raced toward the opening, she detonated the nova explosions, and their effects from deep inside the void rippled and resonated and fed back upon themselves. The flares were even more intense than what she had seen before, as if the explosions were enhanced on the boundary between reality and nothingness.

The brink of the void was already unstable, and as the CDF ships and Solar Navy warliners soared out into realspace, Keah watched the hole in space collapse like a mouth closing, a scar healing—leaving the Shana Rei trapped behind in their void.

The rest of the CDF and Solar Navy ships flew out into the vast nebula.

Keah was sweating, her heart pounding. Heaving a deep breath, she forced unrealistic humor into her voice. “Well, that sure got their attention.”

 

CHAPTER

105

ELISA ENTURI

She survived the transfer—just barely. The stardrive activated and lurched her into lightspeed at the moment the
Verne
opened fire. Elisa's ship suffered extreme damage—she knew immediately that it was bad. One of her in-system engines dropped offline, and she felt the explosion resonate through the ship.

“Hold together!” she shouted, as if she could threaten the hull into maintaining integrity. If the structural plates failed catastrophically, she wouldn't have enough time to know it.

Elisa slammed her hand on the controls. Brindle and Handon had tried to kill her! She was so angry she was shaking, and she didn't bother to set a course. Not yet. Her ship flew off into nowhere.

Elisa had never been a warmhearted person—she knew that—but she was reliable and trustworthy. She counted on others the way they counted on her, and she'd been lulled into a false confidence. She had come to Relleker offering her services—and Brindle and Handon had tried to destroy her. The only thing that felt worse than the betrayal was a sense of her own stupidity. What had she been thinking?

Now, she felt a throbbing inside her skull as she recalled Xander Brindle's last threatening transmission, how the
Verne
had opened fire. Bastards! Traitors and murderers. She could have helped make their new business operation into a guaranteed success.

“Bastards…” she whispered again. There was no one to listen. Everyone who mattered to her had been taken away.

As her ship flew on, she ran diagnostics, assessed the damage. Her hull had held together, just barely, but it would not withstand any further stresses. Some of her fuel was leaking, but the ship still had enough to reach plenty of basic destinations … if only she could figure out where to go. She didn't dare return to Newstation.

She wanted to reset the clock, reset her life. Everything that had previously mattered had been burned away. She had already changed her name from Reeves back to Enturi, reclaiming her original surname and erasing any connection to Garrison. Now, though, as she flew away, the name Enturi also made her think of her old family back on Earth—losers, screwups, parasites. How her life would have been different if she hadn't been forced to spend so many years dragging them along as baggage. They probably resented her for abandoning them, for refusing to give them a handout in their time of need.

Well, Earth was destroyed now, and she could just imagine them calling out her name at the end, demanding that she rescue them when the robots and the Shana Rei closed in. Their loss presented no great problem to the universe.

Elisa had once thought that overcoming difficulties was a mark of her character, that adversity made her stronger. If that was true, then she must be strong indeed.

She called up cockpit images of Seth. She still retained a library of her son's photos, although she had edited them to remove vestiges of Garrison, whom she no longer wanted to see as part of their family. In truth, she had lost Seth too. The workers and teachers at Academ had denied Elisa her rights to her own child—but Seth had fought against her, too, as did Lee Iswander's son … and even the wentals! The whole Spiral Arm had turned its knives on her.

Good riddance to all of them.

After pondering for more than a day while she drifted between star systems, Elisa made up her mind that she would
take
what she needed. It was her due. She could wallow in misery and let herself be stepped on again and again, or she could go back and play the one remaining card she had left.

Lee Iswander owed her far more than Xander Brindle and Terry Handon did. It was her last chance. Before she gave up entirely, she would go back and see if he could change things, if he could prove himself to her again.

With hot tears in her eyes, Elisa adjusted course and performed a final status check on her stardrive and the amount of ekti remaining in the reactor chambers. She decided the ship would get her there. Nursing the engines, double-checking the integrity of the damaged hull, she guided her ship away.…

In less than a day she returned to the bloater-extraction operations with the tank arrays being filled by halfhearted workers. The bustle seemed lackluster to her now, or maybe she just saw it without the illusion of excitement she had felt when she was in Lee Iswander's good graces. The industrial activity seemed quieter, the number of ships and workers less than before. Some unreliable Roamer workers must have abandoned Iswander when times got tough. Elisa felt indignant on his behalf—she would never have abandoned Iswander … if he hadn't cast her out first.

She flew in, seeing drained and discarded bloater husks drifting loose, as if there weren't enough people left to corral them. The pumping operations continued at full speed, but the ekti-X tanks were piling up for distribution. Three full arrays were ready to be shipped, and other tanks were corralled in stockpile groupings. Iswander was probably unable to sell it. Elisa had seen how he was blackballed at Newstation. By now, there would be so many other upstart ekti producers that any buyers could simply brush him aside.

Once again, the man would be ruined. Elisa could have helped him.…

He was a fighter, though, and Elisa wanted to fight at his side—if he would have her back. They belonged together. She had her pride, and she hated the fact that this was her best option. Elisa did what she had to do.

Even though the security had become lax, her arrival was soon noticed. She ignored the comm inquiries and transmitted directly to Lee Iswander. “I need to speak to you in person, sir.”

When his face came on the screen, she was shocked to see how drawn he looked. He had dark circles under his eyes. Iswander no longer looked strong and confident; instead, he seemed at least partially broken. “Elisa, I told you to go. You are not welcome here. I can't have you at my operations.”

Seeing him like this caused a deep ache in her heart. She had meant to shout and demand her rights, but now he just looked weak.

Elisa was not weak, though. “You have to take me back,” she said, but her determination lasted only an instant. Her vision blurred. “You have to take me back!” she repeated. “I've got nowhere else to go.”

 

CHAPTER

106

XANDER BRINDLE

After the “unpleasantness” with Elisa Enturi, Xander and Terry decided it would be a good idea to go back to Rendezvous, hauling the next batch of salvage hulks with them. That woman's arrival reminded Xander that even though the Shana Rei and the black robots were out to eradicate the human race, there were also plenty of dark and evil people out there, too.

It wasn't just Elisa driving him away from Relleker, though. The planet below was completely dead, and it sickened him to see so many ruined civilian ships wiped out in orbit.

“I think our place is at Handon Station, so we can make sure it's run properly,” Xander said. He gestured out the
Verne
's front windowport. “We're executives. We have people to do this sort of work.”

Terry nodded. “We should be there.”

OK sat at the helm controls awaiting orders. “I would be happy to monitor the ships to be dispatched to Rendezvous. Shall I compile an inventory of the most viable Relleker salvage ready for delivery? With the tethers holding them together, we should be able to transport the entire batch.”

“You do that, OK,” said Xander.

Terry added, “With all those expensive modifications we made, now we're using the
Verne
as a space tug!”

The compy diligently did his work, as Xander contacted Annie D, Omar Selise, and the other salvage workers. Omar responded, “You two go back to Rendezvous and make sure the repair yard is ready to put the pieces back together. We'll keep gathering spare parts.”

Annie D added, “We should already have enough components to build at least ten new ships for the open market.”

OK interjected, “If my assessment is correct, the currently salvaged components can be reassembled into at least nine standard cargo vessels. I am assessing various ship designs to make the best use of our resources.”

On the screen, Omar fixed his gaze directly on Xander. “And you tell me what else you find, you hear? I'm counting on you for my grandson.”

“I'll let you know,” Xander said, in a rush to end the conversation.

In the weightless ship, Terry pulled himself into the piloting deck with his legs drifting behind him. He swung into the chair. “What was that about?”

Xander talked quickly. “We have to distribute responsibilities if we're going to run a big operation. You don't need to know every administrative detail.”

Terry chuckled. “Nor do I want to.”

As they prepared to depart, the last salvage hulls were securely tethered together. With its enhanced engines, the
Verne
could tug them using boosters, hauling all that salvage to the Rendezvous asteroid cluster. The setup reminded him of the old-fashioned custom of tying tin cans on strings behind a newlyweds' car. When the load was ready, the
Verne
accelerated the collection of wrecked ships.

In the previous several days, Xander had studied the medical reports OK had scouted. Terry kept himself so busy monitoring the debris field that Xander had opportunities to do the work out of his partner's view. He was no medical expert, but from what he could tell, the spinal-restoration research showed promise. As far as he was concerned, the experimental treatment might be worth the risk, despite the small possibility of bad side effects, but he hadn't mentioned it to Terry yet. He knew his partner would have a knee-jerk reaction against it, but Xander wouldn't listen to his excuses. Rather, he intended to gather all the data, compile his arguments, and present his case—then see what would happen.

At least four times during the flight back to Rendezvous, Xander tried to raise the idea, but he always backed down, convinced he should double-check just a few more details.