As they suited up, Ildiran engineers and warrior kith studied the Kolpraxa’s design plans to familiarize themselves with the external airlock placement, discussing their plan of rescue.
From the flagship’s command nucleus, the Adar watched his crew make their way over to one of the exterior airlocks. The controls were sealed with the ebony film, but when the rescue team used their lasers, the intense light peeled away the coating, turning it into smoke and shadows. They worked at the hatch for more than an hour.
Osira’h fidgeted beside the Adar. “I’m trying to let him know that help is coming, but Gale’nh can’t sense us, can’t sense me, though we’re so close, even with the thism of so many Ildirans aboard these warliners. I can’t detect any crew aboard the Kolpraxa. None at all.”
“There were thousands,” Zan’nh said.
“And now I sense none.” Impulsively she added, “I want to suit up and go over there with the rescue crew. I need to be there for Gale’nh.”
“Not until we know it is safe,” Zan’nh said.
“When I was a child, I saved our entire Empire.” Her eyes flashed. “My presence on the Kolpraxa will help keep us safe.”
When the Adar could not dissuade her, he and Osira’h both suited up and jetted over to the silhouetted ship. By now the engineering team had forced open the airlock’s external hatch, but they waited for Zan’nh to join them. Moving with extreme caution, they entered the Kolpraxa.
The interior of the lost ship was dim and only the grayish blue emergency bioluminescence lights glowed, giving the corridors a surreal appearance. The temperature measured as cold, but not intolerable. The searchers carried brilliant blazers that shone into every corner, bleaching away the shadows, but creating a flood of new ones behind them.
When sensors indicated that the atmosphere was breathable, one of the engineer kith risked opening his faceplate. After he breathed without difficulty for several minutes, the warrior kith followed suit, but made the Adar and Osira’h wait while they too verified that the air was safe.
Zan’nh inhaled, trying to place a strange smell. A warliner’s atmosphere was always scrubbed and processed, but this smelled cold and lifeless. Except for the small group accompanying him, he detected only a resounding silence in the thism. Everything about the Kolpraxa was drained of energy, devoid of life.
“Where has the crew gone?” Osira’h asked. “There’s no thism here at all.”
The team moved forward. The corridors were empty, as were the chambers and meeting rooms, the dining halls, the crew quarters. All deserted. Osira’h struck out in the lead. “To the command nucleus—I feel Gale’nh there.”
The interdeck lifts were nonfunctional, so the team climbed stairs and ladders, deck after deck, until they reached the command nucleus. The transparent observation dome was entirely obscured by a blackness that allowed no glimmer of starlight inside. The control panels were dead and dark. Even the faint blue emergency lights barely functioned here.
They found Tal Gale’nh, all alone in the dark. He sat on the floor beside the command rails. Although he faced the searchers, he didn’t react to their arrival, didn’t seem to see them.
He huddled next to five bodies, the only other Ildirans they had seen aboard the Kolpraxa. His arms were outstretched, as if trying to encompass the fallen crewmembers next to him. They were all completely drained of color, bleached into near nothingness.
In the pale blue light, Adar Zan’nh did not at first recognize the difference, but Osira’h ran to her brother. “Look at his hair!”
Tal Gale’nh had once had dark locks and a deep greenish gold skin. Now, the color had been washed out of him. His skin was ghostly pale, his hair the color of ivory. His eyes stared ahead.
Zan’nh shone his handheld blazer on the Tal’s face. Osira’h wrapped her arms around her brother, clung to him—and finally Gale’nh stirred. Osira’h touched his forehead, cupped his cheeks in her hands, and closed her eyes as she concentrated.
Eventually, Zan’nh felt a flicker as Gale’nh’s presence returned to the thism. The pale and devastated Tal looked at his sister, then at the Adar. “They’re all gone.” His voice was a hoarse whisper, like stone scraping on stone. He indicated the bodies around him. “I tried to save these, used all my strength to hold them, while the shadows took the others away. Not… enough left.”
Zan’nh spoke in a crisp, commanding voice, hoping to get through. “What happened to your crew, Tal?”
Gale’nh’s eyes flickered, but continued to stare off into an inconceivable distance. “The shadows took them and unmade them… but they said I was different.” He heaved a deep breath and let it out. “All my people are gone, faded to black.”
SIXTY-ONE
DALE REEVES
The ragtag group of Retroamer ships arrived at their isolated destination: an incredible and majestic alien city in space, built and abandoned long ago. Clan Reeves could call this place their own.
Dale Reeves and his wife rode with the bearded patriarch in the convoy’s lead ship. After investing so many years of work at the Rendezvous site, Dale had been uneasy about this great exodus, but he knew he would never change his father’s mind. Olaf Reeves was like an asteroid on a collision course, and those who got in his way would suffer from the impact. Garrison had proved that without question.
Sendra came to the forward compartment with their two sons. “The boys want to watch as we arrive.”
She was a good mother, patient with Jamie and Scott—more patient, in fact, than she was with him. Sendra was a strong woman, ready to fill her role as the wife of the future clan leader. The only problem was, Sendra had expected Garrison to be the next head of clan Reeves. Dale had never aspired to be a leader and did not quite understand why she had married him anyway. Maybe Sendra thought she could change him, strengthen him, make him into the right sort of person.
But Dale Reeves wasn’t malleable in that way. His father had attempted to bully, poke, and prod him into becoming a leader. Dale had tried—he truly had—but it didn’t work. He remained a quiet, amenable person who liked to listen more than he liked to talk, which was good when he sat next to Olaf Reeves, but didn’t bode well for making tough decisions of his own as clan leader.
Now, the Retroamer vessels decelerated as they arrived at a large, strange habitat built out in space, far enough from the parent star that it had remained unnoticed and empty for millennia. Dale had never seen anything like it—a giant self-contained alien metropolis, completely dark, bristling with towers.
The space city was built on a five-point pattern; separate arms of varying lengths radiated from a central hub so that the structure looked like a spiny, metal snowflake with swollen polyhedral modules—habitation areas? Storage chambers? Ildirans had a very distinctive architectural style—as did the Klikiss—but this station had a completely different origin. Someone, something else had designed this.
“Do you think it was built by some unknown alien race?” Dale asked. “This could be the find of the century. Shouldn’t we report it to the Confederation?”
Olaf grimaced with disdain. “Our green priest will share the necessary details, but I’m not having hundreds of scholars and xeno-archaeologists crawling all over our home. We found it. The right of salvage is clear.”