As three of her children entered, Nira straightened. Interrupting Adar Zan’nh, Rod’h stepped forward past the courtiers and audience members. “Something terrible happened to the Kolpraxa.”
Muree’n added, “They were attacked, possibly destroyed.”
“We think it was another shadow cloud,” Osira’h said. “Like the one the Adar encountered. But Gale’nh is still alive. We can all sense him. Our bond with him is strong.” Next to her, Muree’n and Rod’h nodded.
The Mage-Imperator raised his hands as if to grasp the invisible threads that wove through the air in front of him. “I thought that might have happened… several days ago. I sensed a tremor in the thism, but it was cut off, as if the threads to many of my people suddenly went numb.”
Adar Zan’nh spoke with gravity. “In our history, we have seen this before, Liege—I believe the Shana Rei have returned from the void.”
Palpable terror rippled through the audience. When Rod’h shot a glance at Osira’h, all the pieces fell into place for her. A shadow cloud had swallowed the robot ships. The Kolpraxa had vanished into cold, dark, blankness. The Shana Rei! It seemed impossible.
Osira’h faced Adar Kori’nh, and her voice was husky as she spoke. “I can guide you to where Gale’nh is. We may be able to save him. If so, perhaps he can give us answers.”
Rod’h lifted his chin. “Let me guide you to him—I can do it.”
Mage-Imperator Jora’h made his decision without even looking at Rod’h. “No, Osira’h is the strongest, let her show the way—if she can. Adar, take a septa immediately to search for the Kolpraxa.”
Rod’h looked disappointed, even annoyed, at being passed over for the important duty.
The Mage-Imperator stood up from the chrysalis chair. “If the Shana Rei from ancient history have indeed returned, we must know before the shadow spreads farther.”
FORTY-NINE
ZHETT KELLUM
The swirling clouds of Golgen were restless, and increasing winds whipped across the atmospheric layers. As Zhett stepped out onto the skydeck, she could smell the foul chemical vapors coughed up from deep below. For years, she had watched this planet, staring at the kaleidoscopic tangles of cloud bands, the ever-changing cauldron of colors. She knew the gas giant’s moods, and right now Golgen was in a surly one.
Near the edge of the deck, Shareen and her friend Howard peered down into the clouds, shoulder-to-shoulder, hypnotized by the storms. The studious young man seemed to be mapping out meteorological equations in his mind, while Shareen impressed him with the story of an enormous vortex storm years ago that had caught the skymine in a slow maelstrom for two weeks before the hurricane forces dissipated.
They were so preoccupied with each other that Zhett startled them when she stepped up. “I think this is something different, Shareen. I don’t like it.”
The clouds looked bruised and discolored, but the weather satellites detected no large-scale storms brewing. On a planet the size of Golgen, storms were huge but ponderous. They took months, even years, to rise and die. Zhett and her skyminers should have had time to prepare.
This vortex, though, was changing in a matter of hours.
Kilometers-long whisker probes dangled into the cloud decks beneath the skymine, analyzing chemical compositions and vapor layers. Sounding stressed, the shift chief called Zhett to the control dome. “You’ve got to see this for yourself—I have no idea what it means.”
“On my way.” She glanced at Shareen and Howard. “Coming?”
Howard continued to stare out at the stormy clouds. Shareen called over her shoulder. “We’ll be there in a few minutes.”
Taking a lift up to the control dome, Zhett could hear the skymine groan and rattle in the increasing winds. The powerful antigrav engines would keep them afloat, but the skymine could be in for a rough ride.
Del was already in the control dome, doing his best to appear knowledgeable and commanding. “Gas giants are capricious things, by damn.”
The control crew turned to Zhett as she arrived, relief clear on their faces. “I’ve never seen a cloud layer profile like this,” said the shift chief. He called up a display of uncharacteristically jagged traces from the probes, as well as color-coded chemical analyses of vapor content.
Suddenly the signal spiked, and the entire skymine lurched as the dangling probes went taut, then snapped free. The skymine tilted, as if being tossed about on rough seas. The shift chief yelled, “Something just tore off our whisker lines!” Sparks flew from the control decks. Alarms whooped. “Stabilizers are working overtime—but they can’t handle it.”
Zhett raced to a set of screens that showed images from exterior cameras and scout flyers circling the skymine. A maintenance man called from one of the drifting ekti silos. “The clouds are opening up! Something’s down there.”
A lump as heavy as cement formed in Zhett’s chest as the misty layers parted, and a dark and angry stain swirled up. Shapes moved deep below—ominous diamond spheres studded with pyramid spikes.
“By the Guiding Star!” she whispered in awe, then slammed her hand down on the station-wide comm. “The drogues are back! Prepare for evacuation!”
Ten huge hydrogue warglobes rose from the depths of Golgen and surrounded the skymine. The sight reminded Zhett of the horrors of the Elemental War, how these seemingly unstoppable diamond spheres had destroyed whole EDF battle fleets and wrecked countless Roamer skymines.
Del Kellum’s face paled. “But—they’ve been quiet for twenty years, by damn.” His own beloved Shareen Pasternak had perished aboard a skymine that the drogues had annihilated.
She got on the comm. “Fitzy, get Toff and Rex! Time to go.”
Evacuation alarms sounded throughout the skymine. The crew had been drilled thoroughly for this situation, which they had hoped never to see again. Now they scrambled to their stations.
An eleventh hydrogue warglobe rose to the top of the clouds and bobbed there, motionless.
“The drogues aren’t opening fire,” Del Kellum said. “What the hell?”
Zhett realized that her daughter and Howard were still out on the skydeck, but before she could manage to say anything, Shareen signaled her. “Mom and Dad, I need you here—now! You have to see this. He—it—says it needs to speak with you!”
Zhett nearly collided with her husband as he rushed to the control deck with a crying Rex and a flushed and breathless Kristof. “I’ll lead the evacuation,” Patrick said. “Our ships can spread out in the sky until we get vessels to take us up to orbit. We just might be safe there.”
Shareen’s voice hammered through the comm. “Mom and Dad, please—on the skydeck, now!”
The lifts were jammed with people trying to get to different decks, but Toff bounded ahead of all of them. Reaching the proper level, they all ran out onto the windswept skydeck where Shareen and Howard still stood side by side.
A living hydrogue stood on the open skydeck—a human-shaped avatar fashioned out of liquid metal. The elemental figure faced them, silent and unmoving, like a statue.
As soon as her parents appeared, Shareen pointed out to the sky. “Look at the warglobes! Something’s wrong with them.”
The diamond hulls were stained, as if suffering from some kind of blight. Black splotches seeped into the curved crystal, and dark cracks appeared. The smooth spheres rolled slowly in the thick clouds, and the discolorations grew and swelled, hardening like rough scabs.