Blood of the Cosmos (55 page)

After OK had surreptitiously placed the tracker on Elisa's ship, the woman had traveled around the Spiral Arm in what seemed nothing more than aimless wanderings, before she eventually returned to Ulio, at which point the automated tracker had downloaded the information from her nav computer.

Connecting the dots and retracing Elisa's flight path should have led the
Voracious Curiosity
to wherever Lee Iswander was getting his stardrive fuel—another bloater cluster, presumably—but they just seemed to be retracing the aimless wanderings.

Though the mystery about the operations was frustrating, and Aelin's comments about the “slaughter” at the ekti site were ominous, Tasia was glad to be out flying with Robb, just like old times, and she enjoyed the company of Orli and DD, too. She decided to consider it sightseeing. With no green priest aboard, they had been out of contact with the rest of the Confederation since they left Ulio, so she would make the best of it.

Tasia had been brought up a Roamer, the youngest member of clan Tamblyn under the ice sheets of Plumas. She remembered the thrill, the danger, and her determination when she ran off to join the Earth Defense Forces, determined to battle the hydrogues that had killed her brother Ross. She already knew how to fly a spaceship—she was a Roamer, after all—and she had surpassed many of her fellow cadets, much to their annoyance.

In the EDF, she had also met Robb, and their lives were bound together through crises, through war, and then the aftermath of war. Their son Xander had been born aboard this ship, and they had flown together as traders for years, until Rlinda turned over all the “important work” to them.

But those footloose days were some of the best Tasia remembered, being with Robb as the parsecs rolled along. Cooping two people up in a ship is a good way to destroy a relationship, and it had certainly been rough at times, but they had gotten through it—stronger. And it had been fun.

With so much responsibility at Kett Shipping, sometimes Tasia forgot that. Rather than sitting at headquarters buried under administrative work, she preferred doing something useful. She chalked it up to her Roamer blood, although she wasn't sure
anybody
would rather sit at a desk than fly out and see the Spiral Arm. It was time to stretch her starship legs—and to figure out exactly how Iswander was producing his ekti-X. After all, they expected to be in business with him for a long time.

Now, two days out, she lounged in the cockpit of the
Curiosity
, comfortable and at home, but Orli Covitz was restless. She popped into the cockpit. “How long until we reach the first destination?”

“About an hour sooner than the last time you asked,” Tasia said.

“Three hours and fifty-seven minutes from now,” DD said after accessing the nav computer.

Tasia smiled. It was good to have a compy aboard again.

Robb said, “According to the downloaded records from the tracker probe, Elisa went to this spot, stayed less than two hours, then changed course and went somewhere else.”

Tasia scanned the star charts, then empty space around them. “I doubt it was for the scenery.”

“Maybe a dropoff point or a rendezvous?” Orli said. “Elisa Enturi isn't the type of person to wander aimlessly.”

Before long, Tasia disengaged the Ildiran stardrive, and the
Curiosity
dropped into the general vicinity of the tracker coordinates and coasted without active sensors so they could approach cautiously.

“It's not even in a star system,” Robb said. “What was Elisa doing out here?”

“Would you like me to provide a list of the closest stars and habitable planets?” DD offered.

“Not yet.” Tasia leaned closer to the windowport.

“We're so far off the beaten path.…” Orli studied the screen, which showed only a scatter of distant stars. She suddenly brightened. “Extend your scans and look for bloaters.”

Robb set their defensive screens and used passive sensors first so the
Curiosity
would remain undetected. “There's a large thermal signature ahead, but it's dissipated over a wide volume.”

Tasia ran a double check. “No energy signatures, no industrial activity. No transmissions on any of the common bands, not even coded signals.” She made a decision. “I'm risking a set of active scans. Who's going to detect us out here anyway?”

When the
Curiosity
's sensor sweeps plowed ahead, they activated some kind of pinger, a signal pulsing with metronomic blips. Orli recognized it. “That's a distress beacon—an automated one. There's no voice transmission.”

Robb powered up the
Curiosity
's engines and accelerated forward. As a precaution, he increased power to the ship's shields and defensive weapons. Tasia manned the monitors, alert. DD and Orli crowded in the cockpit behind them.

The first thing they saw from the active-scan images was a diffuse scatter of bloaters, large gray-green sacks drifting along in the darkness like discarded balloons. “They're usually in a denser cluster than this,” Orli said.

DD's optical sensors glowed. “Something may have happened to the core. The distress beacon is emanating from the approximate heart of where I project the bloater cluster would have been, based on the paths of these outliers.”

Orli said, “This place reminds me of the Iswander extraction yards. Maybe this is one of his other sites.”

Then they discovered the wreckage. Tasia stared at the spiraling hunks of debris with a mixture of amazement and horror. The thermal signature had mostly faded, but industrial junk was strewn everywhere: hull plates, tumbling engines, torn-apart superstructures, metal tanks, twisted machinery.

“Maybe Iswander had another industrial accident, like at Sheol.” Tasia saw tattered, drifting husks of bloaters as well. She tried to imagine the firestorm that could have obliterated a large and ambitious complex like this. “A natural disaster? Human error? Or an outright attack?”

Robb altered the
Curiosity
's course toward the distress beacon. “No life signs, but we've got to check it out.”

They found the torn hulk of a large industrial tanker, which was more intact than the rest because of its original size. It looked as if a sledgehammer of a shock wave had ripped it open, and now it hung dark, cold, the corpse of a vessel.

“No life-support systems active,” Tasia said. “Not detecting much residual atmosphere either. I doubt anybody's alive in there.”

“The distress beacon must have been automated,” Robb said.

“Maybe part of the bridge is intact enough for us to retrieve a log. Then we could find out what happened,” Orli said. “We should at least check.”

The
Curiosity
circled the larger ship, playing its inspection beacons over the hull plates below, and Tasia saw familiar clan markings. “This wasn't an Iswander operation—that's clan Duquesne.”

“I didn't know the Duquesnes were working with the Iswanders,” Robb said.

Tasia looked at the wreckage, drew a possible conclusion. “I'm not convinced this was an alliance.”

While DD diligently mapped the debris field and tried to project how many structures had been destroyed in what must have been a spectacular chain reaction of exploding bloaters, Tasia and Robb suited up to go to the main tanker. While Orli and DD remained behind, the two of them used jetpacks to propel themselves from the lower hatch of the
Curiosity
to the battered vessel.

They entered through one of the gaping holes blown into the vessel, and once inside they worked their way from deck to deck, helmet lights shining as they kept in contact, watching out for each other. Their imagers sent video back to Orli and DD.

They encountered several bodies in Roamer jumpsuits wearing frozen expressions on their faces.

One of the connecting corridors was damaged, so Tasia and Robb had to retreat and find another route, but they eventually worked their way to the small control bridge. The tanker's high deck was damaged, its bridge windowport blasted in, the bulkheads ripped open. Any bodies that had been on the deck were gone, sucked out into the vacuum.

Robb anchored himself as he stared at the mangled remains of the bridge, but Tasia moved to the access stations, trying systems until she finally found a barely functional computer terminal.

“Found the log files. They're corrupted, but should be salvageable.” She transmitted the logs directly to the
Curiosity
so Orli and DD could begin repairing and decrypting them. “All right, that's what we came for—no need to overstay our welcome.”

“I agree,” Robb said. “Let's get back.”

Once they were aboard the
Curiosity
, they shucked out of their suits and made their way to the cockpit, where they found Orli Covitz looking pale and stunned. Even DD seemed agitated.

“You both better watch this for yourselves,” Orli said and began playing the log on the main cockpit screen. “This wasn't a cooperative operation between clan Duquesne and Iswander Industries. And Elisa Enturi did not come for a friendly visit.”

On the automated bridge log, Aaron Duquesne was in a shouting match with Elisa Enturi, who had come in a small armed ship. They listened to a heated exchange. Elisa's voice was like a razor. “Lee Iswander doesn't need to tolerate your competition.”

“And what are you going to do about it, bitch?” Duquesne said.

Then Elisa opened fire, targeting one of the bloaters. Her ship accelerated away, retreating at full velocity. The Duquesne log entry winked out as the ekti-filled nodules ignited and a hurricane of fire ripped through the entire extraction yard.…

Tasia and Robb just stared. “She wiped out the whole operation! Elisa knew exactly what would happen if she ignited a bloater,” Orli said, sounding sick. “She murdered all those people. That was … Seth's mother!”

Tasia stared at the screen, then looked at Robb as her stomach knotted again. “And our son is her business partner.”

DD spoke in an oddly energetic voice. “This is just the first destination the automated tracker recorded. If we follow her to the next set of coordinates, maybe we can learn more.”

“Or die.” Tasia dreaded knowing what else Elisa had done, but they really didn't have any choice. The
Curiosity
had to go there. “Setting course now.”

 

CHAPTER

92

XANDER BRINDLE

When the
Verne
finally limped back to Earth after escaping from Ulio Station, Xander guided the battered ship into orbit, then carefully headed down to Kett Shipping Headquarters.

Having been born after the end of the Elemental War, Xander had never experienced the appalling destruction caused by the hydrogues and the faeros. But seeing what the Shana Rei and the black robots had done at Ulio Station made him understand what those horrific days must have been like.

As they wobbled down through Earth's atmosphere, Terry had to bypass several control systems that failed. The
Verne
shuddered, barely holding itself together, and Xander knew the ship was going to be in the hangar for months of repairs. They had not wanted to stop anywhere en route, convinced that they had to inform his parents and Rlinda Kett what had happened. Ulio Station was one of Kett Shipping's important distribution points, and Xander was certain that several company traders had been killed in the black robot attack.

When they came to a rough landing in the main repair hangar, a dozen astonished maintenance techs came forward to stare at the burn scars, the misaligned hull plates.

One man whistled loudly. “Can't believe you all survived that.”

While OK helped Terry, Xander stepped down the ramp, put his hands on his hips, and turned with just a hint of cockiness. “It was a close thing, but we're skilled pilots.” Then, for the first time, he actually looked at the dramatic damage to the
Verne
, and he felt dizzy. Fingernails of ice ran down his spine. It had been a very close thing indeed.

Rlinda Kett strolled into the hangar and stopped to stare at the
Verne
. “What did you do to my ship?”

“I thought it was
our
ship,” Terry said.

“Under license. And you can pay for—” Then she started blubbering. Tears poured down her face, and she lurched forward to sweep both Terry and Xander up in one of her enormous hugs. “I'm so glad you're safe. I was absolutely terrified for you as soon as we learned what happened to Ulio.”

“We came straight here,” Xander said. “You already know Ulio Station was overrun by the Shana Rei and black robot ships?”

Rlinda sniffed, wiped her eyes, and nodded heavily. “A green priest on the station sent out reports while it was under attack. Then the green priest—let's just say there were no more updates.”

OK said, “We have our ship's log showing the last moments of Ulio and how we escaped. Would you like to see them?”

Rlinda looked around the hangar. “Yes, we can use the wallscreens. Everybody needs to know. Let's project it here.”

Xander looked around. “Are my parents here? They need to know, too.”

Rlinda shook her head. “They haven't come back yet from trying to track down Elisa Enturi.”

The compy rigged the ship's log so it could be played on the wallscreens. Xander watched with a sense of dread. He had lived through the events, but he'd been adrenaline-blinded at the time and wasn't sure he remembered many details.

Rlinda stood with a hand resting gently on Xander's shoulder and another on Terry's. The images showed the
Verne
breaking away from the main station, heading out among all the other evacuating ships. The
Verne
shot away as the black robot attackers continued to harass the station, blowing up docked ships, habitation quarters, hunting down and destroying helpless vessels, then swooping after another target.