Rod’h burst into the room, his eyes flashing. “Osira’h?” He was normally haughty and confident, but she saw a gray tinge of fear on his face. With her enhanced telepathy, she could feel his thoughts reverberating through the thism.
“Yes, I felt it,” she said. “I saw darkening strands of thism. I saw the network tangled and broken.” She thought about the perfectly normal Ildirans who had suddenly turned on her mother during the birthday procession, trying to assassinate her.
“I think the Shana Rei are poisoning the thism,” Rod’h said. “They’re trying to attack Ildirans from the inside, by striking at the very thing that binds us together.” He straightened. “It may be up to us again, dear sister, to find a way to fight it.”
“I’m worried about Gale’nh,” she said. “If he felt it too…”
The guard kith accompanied them as they hurried to their brother’s quarters in the Prism Palace. Gale’nh was awake. Ever since his rescue from the Kolpraxa, he had been wan and pale, but now he looked full of dread.
Their warrior sister Muree’n stood next to him, breathless. “I came to protect Gale’nh. I had the nightmare too. I knew something was wrong.”
Osira’h looked at her siblings. “We must see the Mage-Imperator—all of us.”
They found Jora’h in his contemplation chamber where the walls of crimson crystal let in a dark and brooding light. Blazers illuminated the private chamber, but the Mage-Imperator was alone with his thoughts, his concerns.
Seeing how haggard and weary her father looked, Osira’h wondered if he had experienced the terrible dread as well. Was he afraid to sleep? With the thoughts of all Ildirans thrumming through his mind, he, too, must have been sensitive to the shadow, the darkening strands of racial telepathy. Somehow the Shana Rei had infiltrated their racial network.
“Father, we all felt the nightmare,” Osira’h said.
“Nightmare… or maybe it was a message,” Rod’h interrupted. “The thism is growing dark. The Shana Rei are looking for weak points.”
Jora’h lifted his head, squared his shoulders. “I am the Mage-Imperator. I am the heart of the thism. I need to defend our race against all threats.”
In a rough voice, Gale’nh said, “We know the stories of how the Shana Rei attacked—not only by physically destroying worlds but also through subtle and insidious ways. How can Ildirans be strong enough to fight it?”
The Mage-Imperator rose to his feet. “Come to the rooftop. I need to be in the sunlight when we speak of this.”
They followed him to the top of the highest minaret tower where mirrors and lenses bathed the deck in rainbows. Jora’h sounded tired as he confessed, “I thought I was just experiencing nightmares, but they may be a manifestation of a more tangible darkness… something inside of me.”
“If it is inside of you, then it is in all Ildirans,” Muree’n said.
Gale’nh added, “You are the Mage-Imperator. You are the soulfire of our race.”
“And I am—I must be—strong enough to save us all,” Jora’h said.
Osira’h watched her father, listened to his voice, observed the determination in his eyes. He raised a hand to wipe the perspiration from his brow. For an instant—just a startlingly quick flicker—the veins on the back of his hand were highlighted by a tracery of black, then they returned to normal.
She grabbed his hand, touched his skin with her fingertips, but she could find no sign. He smiled at her, squeezed her hand, and Osira’h wasn’t sure she had seen anything at all.
ONE HUNDRED AND SEVEN
TOM ROM
She was out there. He knew it.
Tom Rom extended his ship’s sensors, scanned for lingering exhaust particles or, more likely, residue leaking from the damaged engines. He knew he had scored at least one solid hit during the chase.
The Proud Mary was limping along, and the desperate pilot maneuvered as best she could, making suicidal moves and surviving them. The woman on that plague ship must be an extraordinarily talented flyer—or maybe just desperate enough to have no inhibitions or limitations.
Tom Rom would have admired that if she wasn’t causing him so much trouble.
Under normal circumstances, she would never have been able to elude him, but during the pursuit, Tom Rom was startled when his superior ship failed to respond as expected. His engines were sluggish; several minor systems failed, while others lit up with alarm indicators.
Then he realized his disadvantage. He had made only stopgap fixes after the Roamer pirates damaged his ship on Vaconda. Ideally, he would have had all repairs completed back at Pergamus, the engines primed, power blocks recharged, hull integrity checked. But he hadn’t taken the time to restore his ship to full operational status.
After hearing the news of the Onthos space city and the fascinating plague, he had raced off too quickly. No, he thought, not too quickly, since he’d arrived just in time. Even an hour later, and the Proud Mary would have been long gone with the only remaining vestiges of the fascinating microorganism.
Even so, his ship wasn’t ready for this. His systems weren’t capable of the full power he needed, which was a disappointing setback.
Now his ship prowled among the asteroids. He doubted Orli Covitz had any plan; she was simply reacting, making random course changes, trying to hide. She was good at that. Tom Rom drifted along, his ship’s systems alert for any trace, and he also kept his eyes open. Over the years, he had found that his own senses were just as reliable as artificial sensors. He had good instincts.
During the first chase, the desperate woman had jettisoned and detonated an ekti canister to distract him. The maneuver, though expected, had been effective. The soup of gases and reflective bodies in the expanding cloud of debris gave her camouflage among the roiling energy signatures. The flash from her exploding fuel canister had blinded him just long enough to let her dive into that briarpatch, and she’d hidden there like a rabbit, waiting. A smart move.
But Tom Rom was smarter. Sooner or later she would have to come out.
While he had hung there in silence, waiting for her to venture out of hiding in the debris cloud, he scoured his databases to learn what he could about his quarry. According to records, the Proud Mary was a trading vessel piloted by a pinch-faced woman named Mary Coven who always traveled alone. That image didn’t match the younger woman he had seen on his screens. Digging deeper, he found a recent notice that the piloting registration had been transferred to someone named Orli Covitz, and this flight must have been one of her first missions. An extraordinary way to start…
Hiding in the debris cloud, Orli Covitz lasted six hours longer than he had estimated, but he eventually saw the Proud Mary reactivate and ease out of the field. Covitz would be cautious, watching for any sign of him, but he had to let her get far enough from the debris cloud that it was no longer a viable hiding place. Then he set off in pursuit.
He opened fire without warning, hoping to cripple her ship so he could force his way aboard. All he needed was a blood and tissue sample, easy and efficient, but in the event that Orli refused to cooperate, he could take his sample with a hatchet, if necessary.
He chased the Proud Mary into the asteroid field, trying to match her maneuvers. She slipped through a group of tumbling rocks, but Tom Rom’s ship was larger and less graceful. A rough chunk of rock caromed off his hull; the shields were sufficient to protect him, but the ship went into a spin.