Blood of the Cosmos (54 page)

“And then they all died here,” Gale'nh said.

Rod'h stepped away from the pile of cinders and shone his blazer on the frozen body of an Onthos. The creature lay with its sticklike hands up in the air, desperate for warmth and light. Its large eyes were like black marbles.

“Take specimens,” he said. “Two bodies should be sufficient. Maybe we can learn something from them.”

A message from the
Kutuzov
burst came through their suitcomms on the main septa channel. “Adar Zan'nh—we found something at the barrier. You'd better have a look.”

Recovering remnants from the bonfire, Rod'h looked at his brother, whose face was pale behind the transparent faceplate. Gale'nh said, “We have seen enough here. It is as the Gardeners said—this world is devoid of life and light.”

*   *   *

Once back aboard the flagship and heading for General Keah's coordinates, Gale'nh and Rod'h debriefed the Adar. Rememberer Anton displayed the images he had taken of the dark forest, the dead world.

Rod'h felt agitated and angry at what they had seen. “Now we know the shadows destroyed this star system, just as they attacked the Ildiran Empire long ago. We must learn how to defeat them!”

The Adar regarded him with a cool expression. “That is exactly what we're attempting to do.”

The CDF Juggernaut was parked on the inner boundary of the Dyson sphere, where the Shana Rei englobement had swallowed the orbit of the system's lone gas giant. That planet was also now dead, cold, and dark.

In the command nucleus, General Keah's face appeared on the screen, looking both worried and annoyed. “I just received some very serious news, Z, through my green priest. Ulio Station is under attack by a shadow cloud and robot warships. It's devastating, and the bugbots aren't taking any prisoners.”

“Are you suggesting that we depart and go fight for Ulio Station?” asked Adar Zan'nh. “We could not be effective.”

Keah scowled. “There's no point. We're a minimum of five or six days out at top stardrive output. By then it'll be too late. Mr. Nadd has already lost contact with the green priest at Ulio, so the destruction may already be over. Telink messages have gone out to other CDF battleships, and there are at least ten Mantas on the way, but I doubt they'll arrive in time either.”

Rod'h stewed, feeling helpless against the terrible enemy. That attack was happening
right now
. “Then if nothing else, we
need
to learn something vital here to take back with us.”

They reached the dim gas giant just inside the black shell, and the
Kutuzov
cruised up on the curved obsidian barrier. “Follow us up here, Z. We only spotted these things because one of our scout Remoras almost crashed into one. Damn! Reminds me of a cluster of dead flies on a windowsill.”

Adar Zan'nh used the ship's full scanners to actively map what General Keah had discovered: a cluster of gigantic diamond spheres, at least forty of them, each one adorned with pyramidal spikes. All of them were gray, lifeless, cold. They dwarfed both the warliner and the
Kutuzov
.

Rod'h had been young at the end of the Elemental War, but he remembered these horrifying objects.

Hydrogue warglobes.

General Keah said, “It looks like the Shana Rei are picking on more than just us. We're not the only ones in this fight.”

 

CHAPTER

89

SHAREEN FITZKELLUM

Kotto Okiah's Big Ring out among the broiling nebula gases was nearly complete at last. Excitement built steadily among the construction workers. They all expected great things.

But Shareen and Howard continued to work on the small projects Kotto left for them. Shareen knew it was a great honor to serve under one of the greatest inventors of the past century, even just “everyday” inventions, but the giant project out in the nebula called to her. She wanted to be a part of
that
!

The bright spot was working beside Howard. She liked brainstorming with him, picking up on his ideas and racing to bring them to their logical conclusions. She had grown close to Howard as they tackled insurmountable problems, knowing there had to be a solution or Kotto would never have challenged them. And, sure enough, as they put their heads together, they sometimes reached simultaneous solutions so that they both laughed with delight. Once, she even gave him a brief hug, before breaking away in embarrassment. The second time, though, Shareen stopped being embarrassed.

Kotto entered the lab module, his curly hair tousled, his eyes wide and distracted, but he was grinning. “I finally got a chance to look at the designs you submitted yesterday. I'm pleased with everything you're learning. I can see I've taught you well.” He let out an awkward chuckle. “Or, more accurately, you taught yourselves.”

“Based on your ideas,” Shareen said. “You helped us find the Guiding Star.”

“We wanted to show you what we could do, sir,” Howard said. “You are our mentor, and we decided to demonstrate our skills.”

Kotto seemed very pleased. “Your solution to that filter-flow process was genius. You took the problem and the attendant difficulties, approached it from a different direction, and found a mathematical connection that I wouldn't have guessed.”

“We were curious as to how you solved it originally, sir,” Howard said. “Shareen and I tried six alternatives, and that was the only one that worked.”

Kotto looked away. “I, um … to be honest, I've been working on that for some time now. I wasn't sure it could be solved.”

Shareen couldn't believe it. “But, you're … Kotto Okiah.”

“It wasn't a high priority,” he said quickly. “I would have gotten around to it, but I thank you for saving me the work, so I could devote my mental energies to larger challenges. That's what assistants are for—and you two have done very well.”

Shareen added, “The filter-flow process is ready for a prototype, and we could take it directly to market. You said if we made a working prototype—”

“Yes, yes I did—I will share the credit with you, if it works—and judging by your previous activities, how could it not work? A new filter-flow process!” He waffled, then said, “I'm so glad you solved it.”

Shareen was shocked to see tears welling up in Kotto's brown eyes. Embarrassed, he turned away and hurried to the hatch of the lab chamber. “Sorry, I have a lot of work to do with the Big Ring. Keep up the good work.”

Shareen watched him go. Working here at Fireheart Station, she realized she had grown smarter and more intuitive. She and Howard had figured out many solutions she would never have considered before. Howard vetted her wildly original ideas, and they presented the best ones to Kotto.

She went to the broad windowport and stared wistfully out at the gigantic torus under construction. Only a few more weeks, and the ring would be completed, the ends connected, all the power blocks activated to create an inward-curling magnetic field with a flux density greater than anything previously measured—or so Kotto thought.

“I wish we could be out there,” she said. “Those other projects feel like tiny appetizers, and I want the main course, Howard. A big feast. We'll have time enough to solve smaller problems, but we both know what we've been waiting for.”

Howard glanced over at the two research compies, saw they were busy calibrating a piece of crystal-fractionation equipment, and lowered his voice. “That's why I went out of my way to acquire the plans for the Big Ring. We can look at them together.”

Shareen was so delighted she used the excuse to give him another hug. “Kotto didn't exactly give us another assignment, so we have to occupy ourselves somehow.”

“Right.” He gave her a sly smile and called up the records, blueprints, and design specifications for the enormous ring under construction. They didn't speak the name of the project aloud because the compies might tattle on them, but they immersed themselves in the intricacies of the Big Ring.

The electronic blueprints were incredibly detailed, but separated into dozens of independent sets for each construction team. Everyone needed to know their specific responsibilities, but no one, it seemed, was aware of the entire picture. No one but Kotto.

And now, Howard and Shareen were.

When they first arrived at Fireheart Station, these plans would have been incomprehensible to them, but since they had spent so much time sorting, arranging, and deciphering Kotto's cryptic notes, coded labels, and shorthand notations, they could absorb the vast design.

Shareen and Howard spent hours together pointing out connections, discussing the choices that Kotto had made, while trying to fathom parts of the Big Ring that seemed superfluous or, at the very least, needlessly cumbersome. She and Howard followed the thought processes of the great scientist's masterpiece, but after a while Shareen began to grow unsettled. She talked less.

They fell silent as they pored over the design, tracing circuit paths with their fingertips. Howard borrowed Shareen's pad, reran calculations, and returned to the blueprint. She had noticed the same thing and proofed the calculations a third time. Her own results matched Howard's, and neither of theirs reproduced what Kotto proposed. The two tried again and again to follow what he had been thinking, sure they must be missing something.

Finally, Shareen said what was on both of their minds. “I don't think it'll work—at least not the way Kotto expects.”

Howard was more reluctant to say that aloud. “But we're just his apprentices. It isn't our place. We weren't even supposed to be reviewing the designs at all.”

Shareen knew that, and now she realized why Kotto was so reluctant to show the full plans to anyone. Perhaps he had grave doubts as well.

 

CHAPTER

90

GARRISON REEVES

The rest of Fireheart Station was on pause—the isotope factories, the power-block stations, the energy-film farms, even the trading hub with its usual commercial traffic. Everything—and that meant
everything
—was devoted to the final stages of the Big Ring.

Garrison Reeves had joined the main construction crews, glad to have his name listed among so many others, and when he had time off-shift, he volunteered in the greenhouse dome and sent messages to Seth via the green priests. The boy sent excited messages back, talking about school, classmates, and especially the Teacher compies. Seth had even become friends with Arden Iswander. Garrison didn't particularly like the hard industrialist, but he could not let his grudge extend to his son as well.

He also sent more messages to Orli Covitz, but so far had received no response. Celli told him that the green priest Aelin—whom Garrison knew from the first Iswander extraction yard—had delivered the message to her at Ulio Station.

Garrison was alarmed. “Ulio? But they were just under attack.”

Celli nodded solemnly. “Orli Covitz departed some time before the Shana Rei appeared, but we are certain that Aelin died in the attack. We don't know where Orli went, only that she was with Tasia Tamblyn and Robb Brindle.”

He reassured himself that at least she was in good company, but he hoped he could find her. He was looking forward to seeing her again in just a few weeks.…

Working on the Big Ring project, or even just the everyday operations inside the nebula, Garrison remembered again what it meant to be a Roamer. Not the repressive “old ways” that Olaf Reeves had preached to his followers, but the real optimistic ingenuity of the clans, their ability to pull fresh ideas out of the most difficult situations.

In its final days, the Big Ring construction site was a hive of activity. Wearing an environment suit, Garrison used a heavy-hauler chariot to maneuver curved girders into place, while his teammates brought in anchor bolts, and others filled the gaps with thin integrity plates. Soon, they would connect the last segment of the torus.

For aesthetic reasons, Kotto Okiah had decided to enclose much of the framework with hull metal, although scientifically speaking, the framework itself should have been sufficient for the purposes of the experiment. Two weeks ago, Garrison had been part of a crew meeting where an exhausted team leader wanted to hear a justification for so much extra work, and Kotto had grown testy. “It's part of the design. On a project of this scale and this importance, we won't scrimp on details.” The team leader withdrew his objection, although Garrison realized that the answer was not really an answer.

Every day the gap in the ring grew smaller and smaller, and every worker felt a sense of culmination of their work and an anticipation of the wonders of physics that Kotto would demonstrate.

Now, Garrison maneuvered the chariot-hauler into place, connecting another girder, which strung the top part of the ring gap with the bottom part. Scout pods and metal pallets hung in space, silhouetted against the colorful dazzle of the nebula. From his vantage, the remaining space to be enclosed in the ring structure looked huge, but the torus itself was so enormous that his eyes could barely grasp the curvature from where he drifted.

One more week … two at the most, and then they would all be there to watch the experiment take place.

 

CHAPTER

91

TASIA TAMBLYN

Tasia hoped this wouldn't turn out to be a wild-goose chase. The
Voracious Curiosity
had left Ulio Station days ago and cautiously followed the path of Elisa Enturi's ship, but they had no idea where they were going.

As they flew along, Tasia and Robb studied the course data, but the destinations made little sense, so they double-checked the coordinates on the charts. “There's nothing
there
!”