BO said, “Since you are here, Orli Covitz, you are certainly infected. Now we will have to wait until you perish before we detonate the station.”
EIGHTY-EIGHT
AELIN
Elisa Enturi returned to the bloater-extraction operations with great fanfare. “We have sealed a deal, sir—expanded ekti-X distribution operations with Kett Shipping.”
Listening to the discussion without interest, Aelin sat alone and sad in the headquarters module. He touched his treeling, let his thoughts wander among messages from thousands of green priests. Aelin drew comfort from the everyday personal activities across the Spiral Arm.
As he watched the ekti-extraction operations among the drained bloater sacks in space, he no longer felt the joy and wonder he had once experienced. The industrial activity was extensive and exotic compared to the forests of Theroc, but Aelin had felt stifled because he couldn’t share these wonders with his fellow green priests.
Shelud’s death, though, changed everything.
Iswander was never generous with his smiles but he gave one to Elisa now. It was just business as usual. “They met our terms without complaint?”
“A few complaints, but they had no real leverage. Your gift of ekti-X to King Peter and our constant shipments are already causing tremors in the stardrive fuel market. Nobody knows where the supplies come from, but prices have started dropping, and traditional skyminers have gone from being curious to being worried. We’ll have six more Kett vessels to deliver ekti-X from both our primary and secondary extraction fields.”
She added an even more confident smile. “And I’m certain that if we cast a wide sensor net in the interstellar void where no one else has looked before, we’ll discover even more bloater clusters. They’ve got to be out there. I don’t know how they’ve gone unnoticed all this time. They seem to be appearing everywhere.”
Iswander called up displays of optimistic and pessimistic projections. “We have to be careful that we don’t glut the market, while we bank all possible profits. I’ve already diverted a third of our production into storage silos. We can build up a huge strategic stockpile of stardrive fuel.”
Aelin’s admiration for Lee Iswander remained undiminished. He had once viewed the man as the personification of the human spirit, taking risks and pushing boundaries. While he tutored young Arden in physics and engineering (learning much about those subjects himself), the green priest also taught him about his father’s business ventures, both successes and failures, including the spectacular failures—like Sheol—as well as the spectacular successes, such as these ekti-X operations.
But recently Shelud had contacted him through telink, told him about the Onthos plague and how all of clan Reeves was dying. His brother revealed everything to him, and once a message was sent through telink, all green priests could access it. Aelin didn’t care that their private last moments were experienced widely.
Through telink, he and Shelud talked and talked, and he’d connected to his brother’s ever-more-wavering and chaotic thoughts at the very end. Shelud described the plague symptoms in excruciating, painful detail until his thoughts became blurred, disjointed.
On the alien space city, Shelud had walked among the dying Roamers, listening to their stories and repeating them into his treeling so that the worldforest, at least, would remember them. The last survivors had gathered in one of the community rooms, knowing they had little time left. Shelud remained connected via telink even as the fever surged through him and his body died.
Aelin kept talking to his brother, giving him a familiar voice to hold on to, a comforting lifeline. And then Shelud’s thoughts slipped away. In the final moment he took the only refuge of a green priest, pouring the remnants of his mind and soul into the trees, letting all his thoughts live among the verdani so that he was at least partially preserved…
Now, in the headquarters module, Aelin only half listened to Elisa giving her excited report to Iswander. She seemed so brave and confident. “You lost everything on Sheol, sir… and I lost my son, and husband.” She didn’t look affected at all. “But we’re recovering.”
Surprised, Aelin lifted his head from the treeling. Was it possible that she didn’t know? “You are mistaken, Elisa Enturi. Your son isn’t dead. Your husband isn’t dead. They both survived the explosion.”
Elisa stared at him. “What are you saying, green priest?”
“I have seen their messages sent through telink. Garrison Reeves works in the rubble shepherding operations at Earth. Your son, Seth, is in school at Academ with other Roamer children. Were you not aware of this?”
Elisa looked aghast and then furious—not at all what Aelin expected. If someone had surprised him with news that Shelud still lived, he would have been overjoyed. He said, “I thought you’d be happy.”
Elisa whirled to Iswander. “He tricked me! He’s still got Seth.”
Flustered, Iswander waved a hand to calm her. “Of course, take a ship and go. I know you want to see your son.”
She was already moving out of the admin module. “I have to rescue him.”
EIGHTY-NINE
GENERAL NALANI KEAH
Along with the Kutuzov, General Keah decided to bring three battle groups to the next round of exercises with the Ildiran Solar Navy. To lead them, she chose three of her Grid Admirals, specifically the ones most fond of their desks. She called those men the “Three H’s”—Admirals Handies, Harvard, and Haroun. She figured they needed the practice.
True, the Three H’s were skilled in the administrative complexities of the Confederation Defense Forces. Admiral Handies had made his mark managing the Grid 0 portion of the fleet, which encompassed Earth, the Lunar Orbital Complex, and the Mars military base; Haroun and Harvard, who managed Grids 6 and 11, respectively, were also adept at paperwork. While Keah wasn’t one to wax poetic about the glories of combat, she did need to pry the three admirals away from their offices and give them some real experience.
Adar Zan’nh had promised to share new information his people had uncovered about the legendary Shana Rei and the possibility of their reappearance. Keah was skeptical of scary stories about bogeymen that lived in the shadows, but she herself had seen the dark nebula that swallowed the fleeing black robot ships, and she had viewed the images of the blackness vomiting up from the clouds of Golgen. Something sure as hell was going on.
She and the Adar both saw the enormity of the potential threat, and the CDF and the Solar Navy were stepping up the intensity of their war games until they figured out what they were dealing with. Zan’nh was bringing an entire maniple of warliners this time—seven septas, or forty-nine ships.
It should be a good challenge.
Keah realized that standard space battle routines would be useless against an intangible enemy like that shadow cloud at Dhula. Nevertheless, the exercises would give her CDF personnel hands-on practice and would keep them on their toes.
She flew the Kutuzov out to the Plumas system for the exercises, though her role in this case was just to observe. The Three H’s had Juggernauts and Mantas, and would be responsible for their own movements. Keah was anxious to see how they interacted.
The CDF ships arrived early in the system, and not by accident. Even though these were scheduled war games, General Keah never took anything at face value. She trusted Adar Zan’nh for the most part, but she had been there at that terrible battlefield in Earth orbit twenty years ago. She had witnessed the astounding treachery when supposed allies had turned against the human military in their last stand. She didn’t intend to be fooled again—ever.