Saga of Shadows 1: The Dark Between the Stars (18 page)

Outside the Spiral Arm, the stars were sparser, and space was emptier, almost devoid of light. The hundreds of Ildiran crewmembers aboard the exploration ship experienced flickers of uneasiness to be so alone, so far from the Empire. Gale’nh felt the tingle of their fear through the
thism,
but he was strong. He hoped that they could also feel his excitement.

Ildirans were joined with faint racial telepathy, the
thism.
Their minds had a synergy, their presence was bound together in a complex mental network. Like a gossamer safety net,
thism
embraced every member of the race and tied them all together. And every strand led back to the Mage-Imperator.

Gale’nh’s mother had told him stories about Earth’s generation ships dispatched centuries ago, following an astonishingly thin thread of hope as they ventured slow and blind in search of other habitable worlds. They knew their journeys would likely take more than a century. In light of what Nira’s people had done, Gale’nh thought, the
Kolpraxa
’s mission was not so daunting.

Rememberer Ko’sh stood beside him. The screens showed denser stars in a river of celestial light below. “All the stars in the Ildiran Empire are there beneath us. We are so far from them. It makes the rest of space seem emptier.”

Gale’nh raised his chin and gave the tall rememberer a confident smile. “Who else in all of history has had a grander view? Does even the Mage-Imperator have a perspective like this?”

“A valuable insight, Tal . . . a different way of looking at the darkness to distract us all from our fear.”

“What is there to fear?”

“The
darkness.
That fear is in our genes, since Ildirans evolved on a planet always bathed in daylight. Only when we ventured to other worlds and star systems did we learn that night even existed.”

“I’ve been to those worlds,” Gale’nh said. “I grew up on Dobro, and our camp had lights shining down. We could see the dark overhead, but I wasn’t frightened by it.”

Ko’sh regarded him for a long moment. “Perhaps your human half gives you strength that the rest of us do not have. Your Ildiran half should remember the Shana Rei, however.”

The others in the command nucleus glanced up from their stations with an involuntary shudder. Gale’nh drew a breath. “There are many questions about the accuracy of those stories. Rememberer Anton Colicos discovered that.”

“That does not prove all the stories are false,” Ko’sh said. “No true Ildiran doubts that the Shana Rei were real.”

Gale’nh had heard about the black ships that swallowed light, monstrous creatures of darkness that had englobed the planet Orryx in shadow so that it remained a wasteland to this day. He knew how the heroic Tal Bria’nh had fought against the Shana Rei using “sun bombs,” but the creatures of darkness were not defeated until Mage-Imperator Xiba’h became a faeros sacrifice, and the cleansing light drove the Shana Rei from the Spiral Arm.

Gale’nh said, “The hydrogues were a more fearsome enemy, and we defeated them.”

Ko’sh sniffed. “With all due respect, Tal, you do not understand the Shana Rei. They are more than black warships—they are
blackness itself.
They attacked the Ildiran race, and the Ildiran soul, through the
thism,
through our fears.” He folded his long-fingered hands together. “Let me tell you a story.”

Gale’nh smiled. “You think I am a child to be frightened by simple tales?”

“During the first attacks of the Shana Rei, long ago, the splinter colony of Ahlar was saved by the Solar Navy. A barrage of sun bombs drove away the black ships. The Ahlar Designate rejoiced with his people, celebrated with his nine sons and daughters.

“But part of the Shana Rei remained behind, living in the shadows of space and the night of the world. Unseen, they struck through the Designate’s mind, blackened his hatred, fed his violence, and convinced him that his own children were evil monsters that had to be destroyed.

“After the grand feast, when everyone was smiling and giddy, the Ahlar Designate took his children into a private room where he drew a crystal dagger and prepared to slay them all.” Ko’sh gave a grim nod. “But he was a son of the Mage-Imperator, and so he was stronger than even the Shana Rei expected.

“The Ahlar Designate fought against the madness inside him while his terrified children watched. Eventually, he plunged his hands into a bright fire, which burned his flesh, but the pain and light and heat were strong enough to bring his mind back into focus, and he stopped himself from killing the children.

“But he could still feel the blackness like a parasite inside. The Ahlar Designate took the crystal dagger and drew a long gash in his arms to spill out his lifeblood. And what poured out”—Ko’sh dropped his voice, knowing that everyone else in the command nucleus was listening—“what poured out was
black blood.
The Designate let it flow down his arms and onto the floor, while he sobbed. The children tried to make him stop, but they could see the blackness oozing out of his body. He needed to drain it all from him.

“Finally when he was near death, the blood flowed true again, and the Designate declared himself free . . . but he was too weak to recover. Even so, he died satisfied, and the children knew the danger of the Shana Rei, as did all Ildiran people.” Ko’sh tightened his lips as he finished his story.

“That was a brave thing to do.” Gale’nh looked at the intent Ildirans who served aboard the
Kolpraxa,
then turned his gaze to the sparsely scattered stars. “This ship’s crew can be brave in our own way. Just think of everything out here that has never been seen before: nebulas, stars, planets full of wonders. And as we experience it, the Mage-Imperator is with us. We are casting our racial net of
thism
wider. Keep studying. Keep exploring.”

“Tal, I detect an anomaly ahead, a dust cloud or a dark nebula,” said a scientist kithman amid the ports and contacts of the
Kolpraxa
’s scanning devices and telescopes. “No energy signature, but it covers a wide swath.”

The screen showed a prominent emptiness, a swatch of space without any visible stars. “Why didn’t we see it before?” Gale’nh asked.

“There are so few stars out here, Tal, it is difficult to see whether the light is blotted out by dust or just emptiness.”

“Then we will do the brave thing.” He lifted his chin. “We investigate.”

Though he was just a halfbreed, Gale’nh’s Ildiran blood did come from the greatest military hero in the Saga of Seven Suns. He had not known his father, but he had studied Adar Kori’nh so intensely that he felt that the man was his mentor after all, that Kori’nh was truly part of him. And Gale’nh did his best to meet that potential. Maybe the
Kolpraxa
would give him a chance to make his own mark on the Saga. . . .

As the exploration ship headed toward the anomaly, Gale’nh could see the dark nebula covering even the sparse scattering of stars, like a hole in space, an opaque cloud that eclipsed starlight. It seemed darker than the blackness itself.

Gale’nh stood straighter at the command rail. Rememberer Ko’sh looked deeply fearful, probably frightened by his own stories.

The scientist kithman withdrew from the network of sensors, wearing a perplexed expression on his flat and analytical features. “Tal, our sensors give indefinite readings. It is difficult to measure the extent of the anomaly when there is . . . nothing there. The cloud is not solid, not vacuum—just a
shadow.
But the shadow cloud has changed significantly since we first detected it.”

“Changed?” Gale’nh asked. “How?”

“The dark nebula is growing, and moving.”

Ignoring the expression on Rememberer Ko’sh’s face, Gale’nh recalled his duty. “If it is unknown, then the
Kolpraxa
must investigate. That is the Mage-Imperator’s command.”

T
WENTY
-
TWO

E
LISA
R
EEVES

Elisa’s screens went blank as emergency filters blocked the surge of energy from the exploding bloaters. The concussion hurled her ship backward, spinning out of control. Garrison’s ship vanished in the blossoming flash.

Since she’d been worried her husband might trick her, maybe even open fire with his low-power weapons, Elisa already had her shields up. That probably saved her life.

As the cluster of nodules continued to explode in a chain reaction, her ship tumbled away, damaged and blind. Elisa couldn’t orient it, couldn’t regain engine control. It was all she could do to hold on.

She finally managed to restore one screen, but the view was disorienting. The spreading inferno filled space, and the shock waves rippled farther and farther. Even the outlying bloaters glinted and sparked, as if in alarm.

Her screens went to static again. Through the windowports, she could see the blast going on and on and on.

Alarms rang through the cockpit, and her life support wavered into the red zones before secondary systems stabilized the air and light. The chain reaction continued interminably, until the inferno climaxed and dwindled as the explosions spread to the diffuse outlying bloaters.

Half-blinded, she tried to catch her breath, astonished to be alive.

With only a few of her sensors still functioning, she scanned the fading energy cloud, frantic. Elisa couldn’t detect Garrison’s ship, not even any wreckage. But if his vessel had been in the heart of those detonating bloaters, it would have been vaporized. That meant her son was dead!

Anger warred with her grief. Garrison had ripped the boy away from her because he feared
Sheol
was a dangerous place—and he’d brought Seth out here to a cluster of unstable bombs in space. Damn him! She felt sick inside.

Over the next several hours, the glare from the clustered explosions dissipated, but her ship was too damaged to move. Her screens remained dark, most sensors nonfunctional, and she would have to determine how many other systems were ruined. It was going to take all of her resources just to limp back to civilization.

With burning eyes, she looked at the portrait image of Seth she kept in the cockpit. She didn’t understand what had happened, refused to believe what she knew was true. It was just a small warning shot with low-powered jazers!

Hundreds of the bloaters still drifted around her, as mysterious as before. Another question tugged at the back of her mind.
What the hell are those things made of?

T
WENTY
-
THREE

L
EE
I
SWANDER

Sheol’s Tower Three was located in the most intense part of the thermal plume, and when the thick support struts approached the melting point, the tower’s legs buckled. In a slow and inexorable plunge, the tall structure folded over and collapsed on top of the smelter barge that had docked to the base to take evacuees. The comm channel was a storm of screams.

Iswander gasped, “There’s no way to fix this!” He wanted to call up his technical reports, prove that he had done everything prudent to provide a safe environment. This was going to look very bad for him.

Rlinda demanded his attention. “How many personnel are stationed on Sheol?”

He called up the data. “Over two thousand—two thousand seventeen, I think.” Then he remembered that Elisa Reeves had gone off after her husband and son. “No, two thousand fourteen.”

“Too many for the ships you have,” Robb pointed out.

Iswander couldn’t argue with that. “We have shielded facilities, heat-resistant smelter barges, bolt-holes in the towers. We did not foresee the need for a complete evacuation of personnel.”

On Tower Two, shielded Worker compies kept working at the evac hatch, while two large rescue ships circled, looking for a way to retrieve the stranded personnel. Through the magnification screens on his desk, Iswander saw one of the shielded robots spark and collapse, its exterior skeleton melting. It dropped away from the hatch and fell like an insect sprayed with poison. Another compy took its place, working at the same ruined controls.

Half of the geothermal sensors positioned around the worksite had already burned out. Through the confusing squawk of alarms, Iswander heard an even more urgent tone: on the warning screen, a spike in the readings indicated an intense heat column rising through the magma near Tower Two.

He signaled to the Tower Two supervisor. “A new lava geyser is forming. Prepare yourselves. There’s going to be—” He stopped, knowing there was no way the supervisor could prepare herself.

Vomiting molten rock covered the hull of Tower Two. The spray hammered both of the waiting rescue ships like liquid cannonballs, destroyed the tower’s evac hatch, vaporized the compies, and hardened in the air to form an impenetrable seal over the structure.

The two damaged rescue ships reeled, unable to maintain control. One engine exploded, and the first ship tumbled into the sea of lava. The other ship managed to circle a little longer before skidding to a landing on the access deck of Tower Two, but the weakened deck collapsed and dumped the second vessel down into the magma.

Iswander reeled, stunned to think of how many people had just died, but also angry and frustrated that the structural engineers had let him down again. The deck should have been sturdy enough. They had run tests!

Rlinda grabbed Iswander’s arm, pulling him toward the door of his office. “Come on, we’re getting to the
Curiosity
now. You’re not going to be stupid and go down with your ship.”

He followed her, surprised by her comment. He had no intention whatsoever of going down with the facility. The structure shook and slid, and Iswander knew it wouldn’t be long before those support struts buckled as well. Captain Kett was right: they had to get out of here.

All five smelter barges had now declared emergencies. Temperatures inside their enclosed chambers were rising and there was no way they could escape. Every crewmember aboard was going to be roasted alive—the barge crews had to realize that by now.