Hidden Empire (25 page)
He had laughed. “Easily done … though it might take a few years. Are you willing to wait? Give me four years.”
“I’m in no hurry. Four years, then. I think I can manage to remain unmarried in the meantime.”
And so, for the past three years, Ross had tended his Blue Sky Mine, never leaving, never giving up hope, never interested
in reconciling with his old father. He had worked diligently in the Golgen clouds, where the harvesting grounds were a particularly
rich source of stardrive fuel.
Now, at the age of thirty, he was clearly on the road to paying off the enormous industrial structure. It was a matter of
pride for him, and it would allow him to prove himself in front of his father. This year, he would finally meet his goal;
their marriage date had already been set.
Now, with a gust of cool wind, the huge skymine shuddered in the air. The white doves fluttered from their roosts, and four
more took wing. Ross looked over the deck rail and watched the angry knot of flashing fireballs, deep lightning storms like
a boiling electrical sea. Coming closer.
The intercom startled Ross as the captain on watch located him. “Big disturbance below, Chief. Something large, unlike anything
we’ve seen before.” The watch captain had spent his entire life on Roamer skymines; Ross thought the man had seen every possible
atmospheric phenomenon by now.
He raised his voice as the biting wind grew louder, whistling around his hood. “Do you think we should move the skymine?”
The captain responded immediately. “The disturbance is moving too fast, Ross. We couldn’t maneuver around it, even if we tried.”
Then the thick cloud decks split open like a blister, and Ross strained his eyes to see, to believe. An awesome crystal shape
emerged from the silent depths, a shimmering diamond globe that rose higher… growing larger.
“Shizz! Do you see—” The speaker crackled with static, as if the local intercom transmission had been disrupted.
Ross stared, and finally, with even greater amazement, realized what he was seeing.
A ship
.
The alien vessel was a huge sphere studded with triangular protrusions, like intersecting pyramids half caught within a glass
bubble. Blue lightning crackled from the points of the pyramids, connecting them with an electrical spiderweb, arcs jumping
from tip to tip. A weapon of some kind, a bizarre structure from the deepest strata of the gas world. He couldn’t imagine
what sort of mind might have built it—or what it wanted.
Ross staggered backward, releasing his hold on the support rail. “Take us up!” he shouted, but he didn’t know if the watch
captain could hear him. “Give me another kilometer of altitude—hell, make it ten!”
Still the alien ship kept coming, silent and ominous. By comparison, the skymine looked like a gnat in the air.
Ross had a sudden vision of a sea monster on old Earth rising to devour a sailing ship. His mind couldn’t even grasp the curvature
of the diamond hull that reflected the clawlike lightning. “By the Guiding Star!” He had heard old Roamer tales about mysterious
sightings on gas planets, a crazy survivor of the long-ago disaster on Daym—but no one had ever dreamed that such deep-core
dwellers might actually exist.
All the doves scattered now, winging away from the skymine. The crystalline sphere heaved itself into the open air, growing
larger and larger.
“What are you? What do you want?” His words could never be picked up through the storm and wind, nor would they be comprehended
by whatever might exist within that strange vessel. He shouted as loud as he could, “We mean you no harm!”
As the enormous construction loomed over the skymine, it sent low-frequency pulses through the air, like basso words in a
voice that might have been spoken by a whale in the depths of an Earth ocean. The vibrations blasted Ross, pounding his skin
and making his skull shudder.
The watch captain had already sounded alarms throughout the facility, rousing all the workers from their sleep shifts. But
the skymine had no weapons, no defenses.
The serpentine energy bolts reached a brilliant intensity, sparking from point to point on the sharp protrusions, then leaped
outward. Ross shouted, covering his eyes.
Electrical lances tore open the skymine complex, slicing apart the ekti reactors, chopping through the storage tanks, detonating
the exhaust nozzles. Another explosion shook the decks.
The Blue Sky Mine lurched, tilted… then began to plummet.
Exposed on the deck, Ross could barely hang on. The white doves, shrieking, flew farther away into the sky, though with the
skymine gone, they would never find another place to land. The doves would fly without food or rest until they died from sheer
exhaustion.
A second blast from the spike-studded alien globe split the Blue Sky Mine down its structural spine. The components broke
apart, and flaming wreckage tumbled like meteors into the bottomless sky.
Ross could hear the screams of his crew. He felt his heart ready to explode with helplessness. He could not even answer the
strange, vibrating words the exotic alien had spoken. The lurch of another explosion hurled him from the observation platform
out into the open air with the rest of the debris.
High above, the destructive alien ship observed what it had done and sent no further signal.
Ross plummeted, arms outstretched, his clothes flapping around him. He stared in horrified disbelief at the complete ruin
of everything he valued… before the thickening clouds swallowed him up.
He still had more than a thousand miles to fall.
I
n the quiet depths of the worldforest, the time had come for the worm hive to hatch. Exuberant, Estarra dragged her brother
Beneto through the forest. They hurried in the brightening dawn out to the dense thicket far from the fungus-reef village.
Beneath the embrace of the whispering canopy, the jungle stirred around them. Beneto kept his hands outstretched, so that
he remained in contact with and attuned to the overall forest, brushing his fingertips against the armored trunks.
“It’s just up here,” she said. “You’ve never seen a worm hive so large!”
Beneto smiled at her. His eyes were half closed, but he walked without a single misstep, without tangling himself in the undergrowth.
“You’re absolutely right, little sister—the trees have told me the hive will hatch within an hour.”
She ran ahead, and though Beneto didn’t seem to increase his pace, he kept up with her, not even breaking into a sweat.
From the best viewing spot, Estarra looked up to stare at the papery structure. Beneto leaned against a worldtree so he could
watch through his own eyes as well as the senses of the forest. Small butterfly-things twirled in the air. Estarra waved her
hands to brush them away, but none of them bothered Beneto.
Suspended on the worldtree trunk, the grayish white hive pulsed like the disembodied heart of a huge organism. The pupating
worms had finished their hibernation and were ready to emerge to the next phase of their lives.
She heard a clicking, chewing sound and knew the giant worms were stirring through the tangled passages of the nest, questing
for an exit after digesting the body of their now-useless queen. “Beneto, do the trees hate these worms because they’re parasites
that cause damage?”
With a calm smile, her brother rested a palm against a scaled trunk. He sent the question into the intricate mind of the forest,
though he already knew the answer. “The trees say no, little sister. Hive worms are part of the natural order of things. These
parasites are no more malicious than most—and they are useful in their own way.”
“You mean by leaving their empty hives for us to live in?” The papery wall bulged outward as the shadowy tubular forms of
worms prepared to break out.
“More than that. You will see in a moment.” Beneto ran his fingers along the tree bark, continuing his telink. “Ah, here.
It is time.”
The hive wall split open, and a mouth ringed with teeth probed into the air. More heads broke free, writhing like snakes in
a disturbed nest. The hive worms spilled outward, their segmented bodies plated with a thick purple armor. Dropping to the
ground like eels in flight, they plunged headfirst into the soil, chewing into the forest loam like carrion eaters burrowing
into rotten flesh.
Estarra was amazed at the frenzy of activity. Beneto put out a green-skinned hand to hold her back. “Not too close. At this
stage, they are ravenous, and anything that gets in their way is considered food.”
Estarra did not need to be warned twice, but she marveled at the infestation. “So what happens to the worms after they go
into the ground?”
Beneto smiled. “The trees keep watch, just as they watch everything. It is part of the cycle. Now they will tunnel deep under
the ground and aerate the soil. They will establish un-
derground colonies until mature worms emerge again, slither up the trunks of the trees, and build new hives.”
Soon, all the worms were gone, leaving the abandoned hive like a tattered haunted house up on the tree. The papery walls had
been broken open, but the tunnels inside remained intact. “Now the hard work begins,” Estarra said, but she didn’t look at
all disappointed.
The chambers would need to be cleaned, some structural walls shored up, new windows cut and doorways placed in more convenient
locations. But the worm hive was the readymade framework for a new Theron village, into which the crowded fungus-reef settlement
could expand. Estarra would be celebrated for her prowess in finding this new conglomerate dwelling.
Beneto received a message from the nearest tree and smiled at his little sister. “Now we must hurry back to see Mother and
Father. We will want to be there when the shuttle lands.”
“What shuttle?” Estarra said.
Beneto beamed at her. “Reynald has just returned.”
Estarra pressed forward with her family members to greet her older brother as soon as he emerged from the craft in the clearing.
During the months he’d been gone on his peregrination, Reynald had changed. His eyes were full of wonder and deeper understanding.
He had visited many exotic places, witnessed events, and learned about a great many topics. He seemed overwhelmed by the sheer
number of people coming to embrace him.
Sarein was full of questions, but little Celli dominated the scene by jabbering nonstop, as if her brother was interested
in every single thing she had done during his absence. Promising his youngest sister a long chat later, Reynald accepted the
smothering attention with good grace, smiling and making comments at appropriate points while his attention was more focused
on Father Idriss and Mother Alexa. Their faces were filled with love—and relief that he had come home.
“Now do you feel more prepared to be a leader, my son?” Idriss smiled through his black beard.
The young man gave himself a deprecating smile. “I have experienced plenty, that is true, but now I feel that I know less
than ever before.”
Alexa kissed him on the cheek. “Then Reynald, my dear, you are indeed more prepared to be a leader.”
That night, Father Idriss called a family banquet, insisting that Reynald would have enough time to speak with other representatives
later. Alexa and Idriss and all their children wanted to hear him tell his stories first.
This diminished the impact of Estarra’s news about the worm hive. Beneto gentled her, knowing there would be time enough for
that announcement.
During courses of larva steaks, yeasty bread smeared with spreadnuts, and a messy dessert of his favorite candied splurts,
Reynald spoke, and everyone else listened. Sarein did her best to keep Celli shushed and attentive, though the girl still
asked far too many questions.
Reynald’s eyes sparkled as he told his news. “Best of all, I got along very well with the Ildiran Prime Designate Jora’h.”
He turned, grinning, toward his brother Beneto. “And he granted me permission to send two green priest representatives to
Mijistra. Oh, it’s a wonderful place!”
“And what will these green priests do there?” Beneto asked, intrigued.
“They will have access to the
Saga of Seven Suns
—the complete Ildiran epic, not just the edited versions the Terran scholars have been allowed to read.” Reynald smiled, know-
ing what a stir his news would cause among the green priests. “Other than a racial reverence for their Mage-Imperator, this
precise oral history is the closest thing to a religion the Ildirans seem to have. They believe they are all part of a grand
plan, a cosmic story line that must work its way to the end, like a plot concocted by an omnipotent audience.”
Reynald leaned closer to his brother. “Jora’h will let you study their billion-line poem, all the history and legends of the
Ildiran Empire. It’s said that no human can read the entire document, even if he devotes a lifetime to the study.”
Beneto seemed dazzled, knowing how much the worldforest would enjoy the input. The prospect of a marvelous new story seemed
to bring him hope to mitigate the trees’ recent uneasiness. “This will be a time of great rejoicing for the worldforest. It
is not every day that the trees get access to such a wealth of information.”
