And Lee Iswander believed it too.
By the Guiding Star, he was going to reclaim the power, wealth, and prominence he had lost in the fires of Sheol, and he felt damned proud of it. A disaster that would have crushed anyone else proved to be nothing more than a setback for him—soon enough, the number 1,543 would be lost in the noise.
And these bloater extraction operations were so easy! The ekti was just there for the taking.
Iswander stood inside the admin module, looking out at the dimly lit islands of bloaters, countless cosmic bubbles floating in the emptiness. Though the cluster was moving closer to the nearby star system, no stars were close enough to shed substantial light. Iswander’s own factory operations illuminated the area like a swarm of phosphorescent insects: refinery stations, cobbled-together filtration chambers, workhorse garbage ships that had been converted to extraction pumps. He had added several more hab modules discreetly transferred from his off-books company stores, careful not to raise questions about why he needed the structures or where he was taking them.
New employees arrived weekly. They signed ironclad nondisclosure agreements and lived out in the habitation modules of the complex. Iswander paid them well enough that he was able to attract unmarried and unconnected employees who were willing to come here.
Elisa Enturi flew out to Ulio and other industrial outposts, acting as his recruiter to find skilled workers and convincing them to take a chance on Lee Iswander again. Many refused, but some took the risk. Their support would pay off extensively. The profits were already so breathtaking that Iswander intended to give a substantial bonus to the workers who had supported him from the beginning.
The complex grew week by week. Iswander’s team could barely keep up with the opportunities that presented themselves.
By contrast, the operations at Sheol had required incredible effort and investment to get up and running. He’d eventually turned a profit, but at such a tremendous cost. 1,543.
Roamers knew how to eke out a living under dire conditions. Some people, like the fool Olaf Reeves, took a twisted, defiant pride in enduring misery. Lee Iswander, though, saw no particular badge of honor in hardship and suffering—the Retroamers were welcome to it.
A moving light flitted about in the industrial field: the restless Alec Pannebaker bouncing around in a survey pod. Pannebaker reported in, “Two more bloaters drained in the past twenty-four hours, Chief. We’re going to need more storage tanks unless Elisa can distribute the stuff faster.”
Iswander responded, “I see no reason why we can’t do both.”
They could also slow down production, but Iswander would not even consider that alternative. He had lost everything on Sheol, and he had a lot of ground to recover. He watched as extractor ships hooked themselves to another bloater and began to siphon off the murky internal fluid. He shook his head just watching it all, feeling energized, as if a special kind of ekti-X filled his bloodstream with optimism.
That afternoon, Elisa returned from making her fifth delivery of ekti-X tankers to the transfer station of Ulio. The woman looked more content now than he had seen her in some time—still focused and impatient, but with less of an angry edge. She had quickly gotten over the loss of her husband and son.
“The Confederation is starting to notice, sir,” she said. “Ekti-X is more efficient than regular stardrive fuel. Demand is going up. Each time, I dispose of the cargo within an hour of my arrival.”
Iswander ran silent calculations. “Maybe we should charge a premium.”
“I would advise against it. We’re producing so much stardrive fuel and so quickly, we can’t risk slowing the demand.”
“Is anyone asking questions?”
She shrugged. “They can ask all they want, but I don’t have to provide answers.” She glanced through the windowport at the bloaters floating out there, drifting toward the nearest star. “In the time it took me to deliver one cargo load, you’ve got three more waiting for me. We need other distributors.”
Iswander felt an odd sensation in the muscles on his face and realized he was smiling. “I got a report from our scouts. They’ve discovered two other bloater concentrations outside of isolated star systems, one cluster even larger than this one.” He clasped his hands behind his back. “Someone else is bound to make the discovery before long, once they know what to look for. I can’t believe that in all of our centuries of space exploration no one, not even one of the generation ships, encountered the bloaters before.”
“They seem so obvious now,” Elisa said. “Or maybe they weren’t there before.”
Iswander turned. “What do you mean?”
“They could be just appearing.”
He laughed. “Manifesting out of the universe? Spontaneous generation?”
“I wasn’t trying to explain it, sir, just offering a possibility.”
“Let’s worry about finding more distributors to handle our ekti output. I trust your judgment, Elisa. Find another ship that will take, sell, and deliver our ekti to customers as fast as we can deliver it.”
He saw relief and wonderment on her face. “So long as we can keep this secret, sir, our wealth could be limitless.”
Although the financial rewards were certainly gratifying, Iswander was just as concerned about his reputation. His name had seemed fatally damaged after Sheol, and he meant to get it back. It was not hubris to reclaim what he deserved.
He smiled at her. “While you arrange the shipments, I’m going to make a trip to Theroc and meet with King Peter. I can still pull a few strings.”
“Isn’t there a legal risk?”
“Not worried about that. I can out-lawyer anyone in the Spiral Arm, if I need to. Sheol was a tragic accident, and thanks to the ekti-X, I’ll be able to make any reparations necessary. First though”—he gave her a genuine smile—”everyone in the Confederation needs to know that I’m back.”
SIXTY-THREE
MAGE-IMPERATOR JORA’H
Though the Prism Palace was bathed with purifying sunlight, Mage-Imperator Jora’h had slept restlessly for weeks.
As the nexus of the thism that bound the entire Ildiran race together, Jora’h had felt the growing unease for some time now, like a grating hum just below the level of hearing. All his people were on edge from the news of the ominous dark nebula, the missing exploration ship, the tales of shadows from Ildiran legends…
This time when he slept, he felt as if he had fallen into an abyss. He tried to fight back to consciousness, but he was smothering, cold—blind.
Thrashing, he forced himself awake, but he could not see, could not breathe. He tried to claw away the blindfold of nightmares. His heart pounded, and the sense of dread was a palpable thing inside him, as if some monster had gotten entangled in the thism and was straining to tear the strands apart. With a great gasp, he flung his eyelids open, and dazzling light flooded in. He tried to orient himself, tried to understand.
Nira was beside him in the bed, and her presence shone even brighter than the sunlight around him. Wide awake, she leaned over him, holding his shoulders. “Jora’h!”
He stopped struggling, and she sank down against him, wrapping her arms around him, pressing her body close. He was drenched in Nira’s strength. As a human green priest, she was not part of the thism, could not connect with him in the way that other Ildirans did, but he felt closer to her than to anyone else. She had been back from Theroc for only a few days, and she too had brought reports of the spreading shadows.