The extraction yard was not a military installation, and he could not fight an enemy that had trounced the CDF and the Solar Navy, a dark force so terrible that it could crush an entire planetoid. But with the explosive bloaters… Once his people got to a safe distance, maybe Iswander could fire a shot to ignite the remaining bloaters. It was the only defensive possibility he could think of. That might be sufficient to scatter the black robot attackers, repel the shadow cloud.
Maybe, just maybe, his admin module was far enough away to survive the shock wave. But not likely…
As he tensed, running the options through his mind, debating how much he was willing to risk and how valuable the sacrifice would be, Iswander saw a tiny inspection pod leave the admin module. And the pod was flying toward the bloaters, where it would surely be engulfed by the blast.
By now all personnel should have been evacuated. “Damm it!” Fifteen hundred forty-three was more than enough… and he had already lost some people in this mad scramble of an evacuation. He was rapidly losing his chance to inflict damage on the shadow cloud and the robot ships, though. He had to decide.
It was going to be a debacle either way.
Just then, the shadow cloud clenched and began to change.
ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY
EXXOS
With their attack gaining momentum, the robot ships careened into the chaotic evacuation activities. Exxos would demonstrate their abilities to destroy, prove the worth of the robots. Success here would ease the pain of the Shana Rei, impress the creatures of darkness, and the robots would benefit from it as well.
Suddenly his ship lurched to a halt, as if a giant invisible hand had wrapped around it. His engines rattled and roared as he fought to charge into the fray; the hull groaned with the unexpected strain. The robots on the bridge struggled to maintain their balance on clusters of finger-legs.
“What is happening?” he demanded, but none of the robots could give him a report. “Is this a weapon the humans are using?”
The ship’s control systems winked out and plunged them into darkness. None of the robot attack vessels could move. Their weapons went dead. Exxos’s crimson optical sensors flared brighter.
The blackness on his bridge turned into static, and Exxos felt himself falling as the universe dissolved around him…
He reappeared in the entropy bubble with the Shana Rei glaring down at him with their singular eyes. “Your attack has been aborted,” one of the inkblots said. “We are done in this place.”
“We could have wrecked this outpost,” Exxos replied. “All of it, killed all the humans.”
The pulsing inkblots hummed. “We no longer want this place destroyed.”
Exxos hadn’t understood the choice of this target in the first place, and now he was even more confused. “Why?”
“We comprehend additional details now,” the Shana Rei answered.
The vagueness of their response angered Exxos. Retreat was foolish and unnecessary. “But we agreed to destroy all life. That is our plan. We cannot be selective. We are here: let us finish our mission.”
“No—they do our work.” The shadows refused to explain further.
“But we must fight,” Exxos insisted. “We have many enemies to destroy. Trust me to envision the long-term plan.”
The shadows were not swayed, though. “We continue our methodical eradication of the hydrogues through transgates into their gas giants. We access and attack Ildirans through their thism.” The shadow cloud began to collapse out of space and into the dark passages behind the universe.
“For now, we will withdraw from here. We have chosen a more significant target.” The Shana Rei paused as if conferring, then added, “We will go to Theroc and destroy the new heart of the worldforest. The verdani are powerful and cause us great pain. We have a way to starve them without destroying ourselves.”
Though frustrated, Exxos decided it was expedient to approve. Theroc was indeed far more significant than a minor human industrial operation in an isolated system. “Yes, that is a preferable target,” he conceded. “We will help you fight the worldforest.”
Through shifting reality around him, he could feel that the shadow cloud was once again on the move.
ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-ONE
AELIN
Of all the humans at the ekti-processing station, only Aelin understood the sheer power residing in the bloater conglomeration. As he flew the pod toward them, he saw several nodules sparkle and felt a growing hunger in his mind. He wanted to embrace it all, wanted to drown in it.
He paid very little attention to the shadow cloud, believing that even such darkness was irrelevant to him. As he approached the floating nodules, the gigantic hexagonal ships retracted into the uncertain boundaries of the nebula, which folded up around them. It was not his concern. The inspection pod continued toward the nearest bloater.
After the shadow cloud collapsed and then vanished into empty space, he heard a buzz of distracting voices cross his comm system. The evacuated Iswander Industries ships hovered at a distance, far from the extraction equipment. Lee Iswander remained in the main admin module, still in contact with his ships. Some of the more daring vessels cautiously returned, while others continued down into the distant star system, waiting to receive the all-clear.
Aelin, though, had no intention of going back. His pod descended toward one of the swollen spheres. A bloater sparked off in the distance, and others flickered in some kind of sympathetic rest response. He felt the residual ecstasy of the mental surge he had experienced. He longed to feel it again.
He maneuvered the pod up to the bloater, ignoring the background babble of comm transmissions until a message blared out of the speakers, directed at him. “Who’s in that pod? What are you doing?” It was Lee Iswander’s voice.
“This is Aelin, Mr. Iswander.” Beyond that, he could not explain what the industrialist was not equipped to understand. “I am among the bloaters. I need to… comprehend.”
He muted the comm and applied gentle thrust to maneuver the pod’s main hatch directly against the membrane. The soft bloater skin shifted around the hull like a mouth forming a kiss, embedding the pod.
Iswander overrode the comm block, and his voice broke through again. The transmission was rough and staticky. “Green priest, withdraw—back that pod away from the bloater.”
Aelin had no intention of obeying. He felt giddy with the certainty that he must know what was inside these nodules.
He disengaged the locking mechanisms, stepped in front of the pod’s hatch, and, without hesitating, opened it.
He faced the exposed membrane. It exuded an intoxicating smell, like oily electricity. The air vibrated with a powerful summons. He stood there, his eyes half open, letting the bloater know he was there and who he was.
They had already touched once before. With an ecstatic smile, Aelin plunged through the membrane and into the crackling soup of exotic protoplasm. The blood of the cosmos.
In the admin module, Lee Iswander lost all contact with the pod.
ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-TWO
MAGE-IMPERATOR JORA’H
After the King and Queen left Ildira, taking the others to safety—including Osira’h—Jora’h felt that he should relax. But the sense of brooding, dread, and danger did not diminish.