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Tom Rom disengaged the stardrive, dropping the ship out of lightspeed to increase his chances of survival, then took a moment at the controls to perform a data backup, dumping all his records into the secondary systems. This took fifteen seconds longer than expected, and he watched the thermal spikes.

If his vessel had been fully repaired, the systems might have been stable enough to give him an extra minute, but they were breaking down. When he saw a suddenly increasing gamma cascade, he knew the reactor was failing.

He dove into the isolation chamber. The self-contained compartment would also serve as a lifepod. It was his only chance. He triggered the emergency launch, bypassed all safety systems.

The hatch slammed shut with the speed of a falling guillotine blade. It would have amputated his legs if he had been an instant slower. The explosive bolts severed the connectors from the main ship, flinging hull plates away. Tom Rom threw himself against the wall and held on as the escape engines ignited, launching him like a rock from a catapult.

Then the main ship exploded. The shock wave struck the escape pod like a vicious slap, sending it tumbling. The pod’s engines valiantly struggled to outrace the detonation—but they could not. A wash of light, radiation, and high-velocity debris battered the pod.

In theory, the containment chamber’s shielding would be sufficient to protect him against the external radiation bath. Even more important, he didn’t want the samples of the plague virus to be destroyed by a bombardment of X-rays and gamma radiation.

The pod continued to reel out of control in open space. Disoriented, hand over hand, he pulled himself along until he found the inset control panel and activated the stabilization thrusters. Finally, he turned on the artificial gravity.

Debris inside the escape pod tumbled down to what was now defined as the deck. As weight returned, he felt sharp pains in his body. He had been battered, and he took a moment to touch the sore spots, flex his arms and legs, press against his ribs. Taking inventory. He determined that nothing was, in fact, broken.

The containment chamber had its own short-range stardrive. Once he recalculated his position using navigational interpolation, he could make his way to a nearby system, acquire other transportation. He had planned for emergencies such as this. His ship had everything he needed in the short term, until he could limp back to Pergamus and present Zoe with an extremely valuable item for her collection.

With a start, he recalled that he had left the vials of Orli’s blood in the open bin on the counter. Unsecured items had flown in all directions during the buffeting.

He scrounged around, looking for the three vials. He found loose records, an empty specimen pack, then one of the vials, still intact and sealed, which he retrieved and placed in the cabinet where it should have gone in the first place.

Under a tumbled analysis tray and a pair of protective gloves, he found the second vial, also sealed. But the third proved elusive. As the evacuation pod continued to stabilize itself and the automated navigation sensors mapped the stars around him to determine his position, Tom Rom scoured the chamber.

He looked in corners, in between storage and analysis decks. Two rectangular system boxes had shifted apart during the explosion, leaving a narrow gap, and as Tom Rom crouched he saw a glint of the blunt end of a sample tube. He reached into the cranny to pull out the last vial, but when his fingers touched it, he felt the tiny bite of broken glass, a jagged edge.

He pulled the tube out. His fingers were covered with blood—Orli’s spilled blood, and his own from a small cut. With a detached analysis that was parsecs away from panic, he realized he was also infected now.

He was going to have much less time to get back to Zoe Alakis than he had expected.

ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN

EXXOS

Exxos relished the fact that humans and Ildirans knew they would soon become an extinct species. Impatient, he wished the Shana Rei would simply unfold and strike huge population centers, destroy Ildira and the traitorous Mage-Imperator, crush the human capital, and then methodically wipe out one settlement after another. For the creatures of darkness, it should be as simple as snuffing out candle flames. Extinguishing the clamorous disruption of intelligent life bit by bit would ease their pain.

But the chaotic inkblot creatures chose their own targets and rarely listened to Exxos. The Shana Rei refused to explain why they had chosen to manifest a shadow cloud out here, so far from any known inhabited system. Why worry about a minor industrial outpost, when they could be destroying Ildira instead? What could be interesting about this place?

But when he objected, the pulsing inkblots turned their singular, glowing eyes toward him. “It calls us.”

“What calls you?” Exxos asked. “What is here? I demand to know.” The Shana Rei did not answer for a long moment, then the voices echoed around him in the entropy bubble, a thrumming cacophony. “We do not know.”

The creatures of darkness had their own goals. They were uncontrollable, unpredictable. Exxos knew that would be problematic once they finished the extended plan to exterminate all intelligent life. What if they reneged on their promise to create a pocket universe for the robots to inhabit and rule? Would the Shana Rei turn against the black robots?

Of course they would.

Exxos and his comrades had already pooled their calculating power. Planning, always planning, they began to consider alternatives for how they might defeat the creatures of darkness. Fortunately, they would have plenty of time. The annihilation of all other life would take time.

As they emerged into the normal universe again, the Shana Rei pulled matter out of nothingness in order to create their hex battleships. The effort caused them enormous agony, as if they were flagellating themselves by creating matter—yet they endured, so they could continue to destroy. A paradox.

When the shadow cloud began its attack on the ekti-extraction field, Exxos and his companions experienced a wrench of disorientation. Then they found themselves on the control decks of their recreated fighting ships. Several of their enhanced war vessels had been destroyed at Plumas, but the Shana Rei simply remade them now, as if nothing had happened.

Individual robots could not be replaced. The memories of those unmade by the Shana Rei were already lost, but the stored experiences of the remaining ones could be duplicated and shared. As their numbers dwindled, Exxos commanded that all of his companions act as backup for one another, with himself as a primary repository of their existence. He designated himself as the baseline entity.

Now the gigantic hex ships emerged from the cloud. Even Exxos did not know what sort of weapons the ebony vessels possessed. They projected an entropic field that disrupted or destroyed technological systems, but that was a passive weapon. He hoped the Shana Rei would cease to be passive.

When the attack began, Exxos commanded the newly manifested robot ships to launch out and destroy, but he was curious to discover what had drawn the Shana Rei to this particular place. He had to understand, had to stay one step ahead of the creatures of darkness, if he intended to continue his bluff.

He observed the island of strange nodules, the flurry of human activity, bright facilities and equipment that drifted among the cluster. Not impressive. The human population here would be small, and Exxos would annihilate them easily—another wasteful exercise, not sufficiently important, in his opinion, to merit the effort. If the Shana Rei suffered so to create their ships for this particular attack, why would they consider the tiny outpost a worthwhile target?