Eternity's Mind (57 page)

He closed his eyes but could not forget the disgust he had seen on Muree'n's face when she saw what he had done. The black taint was inside him—and he had to get it out.

He heard attenders and guards hurrying down the hall, calling after him, but he sealed the doors to his chambers. He needed to be alone for this. He didn't dare let anyone near him—not because they might harm him, but because they might
stop
him. Jora'h had a different kind of duty to perform for his people.

The
thism
inside him was tangled, and he could feel shadows like cold eels swimming in his bloodstream. A black static hovered around the fringes of his vision, and because Jora'h was the nexus of the
thism,
all the darkness came through him. There was no avoiding it, and the Ildirans were helpless unless he could do something.

Unless he was strong enough to do what must be done.

He heard pounding, shouts outside, but he had secured the door with heavy locks. Until now, he hadn't even realized there were locks on his door. The Mage-Imperator always had guard kithmen to protect him, and he had never needed to lock himself away. Then he remembered that the locks were only recently installed by Rod'h—a defensive measure that Nira's son had taken when the mob attacked Prime Designate Daro'h. As he thought of that, his heart ached with more guilt: Rod'h had seen the grim reality before the Mage-Imperator would admit it. And Rod'h had paid the price, swallowed up by the Shana Rei.

The words of the attenders and guard kithmen were muffled from behind the door. Jora'h ignored them and went to stand in the center of his room, where bright light poured through the curved crystalline walls. In this place he had spent many warm and happy times with Nira. This chamber was the heart of the rebuilt Prism Palace, where he had learned to believe again that the Ildiran Empire would grow and stay strong.

But now the shadows were inside him, and he had tried to kill Nira. This had to end.

His movements were jerky, as if black threads were tangling his muscles, preventing his smooth bodily control, but he forced himself to keep moving. For so long he had pored over the Saga of Seven Suns, listened to Rememberer Anton, tried to find some hidden revelation as to how he could fight this insidious enemy.

Following the old story, mad Designate Rusa'h had sacrificed everything to call the faeros, and the fiery elementals had indeed joined the fight against the Shana Rei at Earth, but Earth was still destroyed and the creatures of darkness remained as strong as ever. The alliance with the fiery elementals had been a mistaken hope. Yes, the fireballs had helped fight the Shana Rei in their previous encounter, when the faeros were stronger and the shadows weaker. Now, though, the creatures of darkness seemed invincible.

He had wasted altogether too much time studying the tale of Mage-Imperator Xiba'h, when the true key to saving himself from the inner blackness lay in the tale of the Ahlar Designate. That was what Jora'h needed to follow now.

In the brightest sunlight, he picked up a thin crystal picture frame, a flat glassy plate that held an image of Nira. He smashed the frame into shards, letting the etched image fall free. “I am sorry, Nira, my love.” Then he expressed a deeper, silent apology toward all of his people before holding up the jagged broken edge. His hands were shaking, but he wasn't afraid of his decision. The Shana Rei were what he feared, and he had to get them out of him.

As he grasped the broken shard with its razor-sharp edge, yellow sunlight glinted from the surface, which heartened him, although the crystal seemed to reflect the bright light away from him.

“I'm sorry, Nira,” he said again, then drew the jagged edge down his inner arm, slashing open the skin and muscle, slicing his major arteries. Blood spilled out more quickly than the pain came. Before he could lose his resolve, he switched the crystal shard to his other hand. His fingers were bloody, and the edge was slippery. He cut again, plunging deep in a long gash on his other arm, opening his blood vessels wide.

When it was done, he clenched his fists and held his arms in front of him. As his heart kept beating, he could see the pulses in the flowing blood, like swift tides coming and going. Red liquid spilled out of his arms, ran down his hands, and pooled on the floor, spreading out in an ever-widening puddle.

But it wasn't just red. The familiar scarlet was swirled with black tendrils. More and more of the Mage-Imperator's life spilled out, drawing out the darkness like leeches. Black swirls escaped from his body. They writhed and twitched, and Jora'h clenched his hands tighter to force more blood out.

Within minutes his vision dimmed. He hadn't known he had so much blood inside of him, but it continued to flow … still tainted with the darkness in the
thism.
But he had to get it all out. All of the blood. All of the life.

It continued to spill from the gashes, and the suns shone down on it, highlighting the contamination. All of the poison blood had to be gone—all of it.

His blood flow decreased, weaker now. His heart barely pumped, but he didn't call for help—he couldn't.

Daro'h will be a good Mage-Imperator.

His vision and his soul grew darker as the light washed away, spilling out of him just as the blood did. But the darkness that came next wasn't a poisonous shadow brought on by the Shana Rei, but by a different kind of end, a different kind of darkness.

Jora'h let out a long sighing breath, sure that the last of the shadows was gone from him, gone from the Ildiran race. The
thism
was clean at last … and he let go.

 

CHAPTER

110

LEE ISWANDER

Facing Elisa again, Iswander felt gravely uneasy. After docking at the admin hub, she had emerged from her ship—a stolen Iswander ship—and commanded the technicians to make the necessary repairs, as if she were still their supervisor. Then she presented herself inside the control center. The operations personnel stared at her with a kind of horror, but they looked sidelong, waiting to see what Iswander would do.

He seemed to be out of options. “I am not pleased to see you, Elisa. I gave you a chance to make a clean break. By coming back here you are putting all of us at risk.”

“This is where I belong, sir, no matter what else happens. You need me, and I need you.”

“I don't know what I need, other than to be treated properly in business, and to earn a fair reward for hard work and innovation.” Iswander sounded defeated. “That no longer happens.”

Alec Pannebaker charged into the control center. “You killed all those people. What the hell were you thinking? Why can't you just go away and leave us alone to clean up your mess?”

She gave him a withering stare. “The bloaters were my discovery, freely given, Alec. For better or worse, there would be no ekti-X operations if not for me—and now I've come home.”

Iswander sighed. “She can stay here, Mr. Pannebaker—provisionally. She knows the risks and the consequences.” He narrowed his eyes and hardened his voice. “But I will not defend you if the Confederation comes to arrest you.”

“I have never needed your defense. I can take care of myself. What I need is your faith in me.”

He didn't answer for a long time, then he said in a low voice, “That's something you will have to earn again, and I don't know if it's even possible.”

“Then I'll prove you wrong. Give me work to do. Assign me to a crew, and I'll demonstrate my worth to your operations.”

Though Iswander felt backed up against a wall, he could not deny her. She made him uneasy, even fearful, but she was
Elisa.
He didn't want to admit it, but he did owe her, and if she chose to call in that chip, then she gave him no choice. He didn't want to admit that part of him was glad to have her back. He realized it was a risky decision, but under these circumstances he could not see any better decision available to him. “Mr. Pannebaker, see to it. Elisa knows what to do. If she's going to be here, at least let her make herself useful.”

The normally cocky and good-natured Pannebaker was obviously displeased, but he gruffly took Elisa away with him.

Mostly silent, Iswander monitored his operations for hours, feeling all alone inside the control center even with his support personnel around him. They did their work, but they sounded subdued. He scanned the daily report and noted that seven more workers had sneaked off, all of them members of Clan Tavish. Iswander couldn't hold them here against their will, but he wished they would at least have the courtesy of informing him of their departure. He didn't need to hear their reasons, because he knew all the reasons. There would be no talking them out of it, and he wasn't sure he should even try. What could he offer them anyway? How could he convince them to stay? He didn't even know how long he was going to be in business here, or if there was even a point to doing so.

But he wouldn't give up. That was the point.

He would find some solution, find a new way to resurrect his stardrive-fuel operations, or he would find something else to do. That was what Lee Iswander did. And even if these ekti-X operations were going to collapse, they still belonged to him. Through innovation and development, he had made a vastly lucrative operation out of the wandering bloaters. He wouldn't let it go … even if it seemed to be fading on its own.

Despite the diminished work crews, ekti extraction continued at full speed, even if continuing to harvest the bloaters was a losing proposition with no means to bring the fuel to market. How could he dispose of all the canisters they had already stored? He hoped he didn't have to just dump it in space as worthless.

That thought made anger rise within him. He would never do that! The Roamer clans could insult him all they liked, and they could refuse to do business with him, but they could not erase what he had accomplished. Even now, the Roamers were copying him, making their fortunes while destroying his. Even as they invested heavily in their own operations, they would know—if only in the back of their minds—that they owed it to him.

Then the
Prodigal Son
arrived, piloted by Garrison Reeves—one of
his
ships, an Iswander cargo vessel that Garrison had stolen when fleeing Sheol. Iswander could demand it back, he supposed … but he wouldn't be so petty. He was shocked that Garrison had returned at all.

As soon as they transmitted their identification and flew the ship toward the control center, Elisa strode back in, enraged. “He's got Seth with him. That's my son!”

Iswander was annoyed with her behavior. “Your domestic problems are not my priority, Elisa. You brought enough troubles with you. Why did those people come here?”

She blinked. “I didn't bring them. I've been looking for them ever since they took my boy away from Academ, away from me. I'm surprised they would show their faces.”

Iswander went to the comm station as the
Prodigal Son
drifted in among the bloaters. His words were sharp and clipped. “Why are you here?”

Garrison answered in a calm, professional voice. “On orders from King Peter and Queen Estarra, ships are traveling to all known ekti-extraction fields with an urgent message. We knew where to find you, so we came here.”

Iswander straightened with surprise. What did a man like Reeves have to do with the King and Queen?

Orli Covitz came on the screen, and Seth joined them. Elisa flinched, but Iswander grabbed her arm, forcing her to remain quiet before she could blurt something stupid. Orli said, “The bloaters are not what you think. They are valuable, sentient, and they're fighting against the Shana Rei.”

Another young woman appeared next to a male green priest about her age. “I am Princess Arita. The command of the King and Queen was issued throughout the worldforest mind, but since you have no green priest for communications, we had to come in person. Your bloater-extraction operations are damaging Eternity's Mind. It has to stop, or the Shana Rei will destroy us all.”

Pannebaker returned to the control center. “What the hell is going on, Chief? Who do they think they are?”

Arita continued, “By order of the King and Queen, you must stop harvesting the bloaters immediately. Your operations are hereby shut down.”

 

CHAPTER

111

RLINDA KETT

When their two ships finally reached Fireheart, all hell was breaking loose. Clouds of darkness had cracked open the blazing cauldron of the nebula—and they had to get to the green priests and the terrarium inside. Giant Shana Rei hex ships emerged from the two swelling shadow clouds, and thousands of robot battleships swooped in to harass the ships and facilities.

“Oh hell, I've seen this show before,” Rlinda transmitted. “Never wanted to see it again.”

Tasia's response from the
Curiosity
was clogged with static, partly from the nebula's ionization and partly from the entropy backwash of the Shana Rei. “This doesn't look like a place we want to be.”

“We'd be crazy to go in there,” Robb said.

“I agree,” said Tasia. “Setting course now.”

Rlinda had the container of wental water. “I'll do what needs doing here. You two keep my
Curiosity
intact, go join Xander and Terry, make something of yourselves. But Jess and Cesca asked me to deliver the wentals, so it's got to be important.”

Tasia responded with a rude snort. “You don't get to have all the fun.”

Escaping Roamer ships plunged through the dust boundary at the edge of the nebula and flew helter-skelter into space. Many were pursued by robot ships, but the pilots flew erratically enough to avoid destruction.

The comm channels were awash with the urgent chatter of distress calls. As she flew into the bright gases, Rlinda saw CDF battleships inside the nebula, as well as Solar Navy warliners that were all reeling out of control. Focused on her mission, she spotted the glint of the terrarium dome. Not much time—the battle was raging all around. Rlinda muttered under her breath, “I hope they know what to do with this wental water.”