Blood of the Cosmos (7 page)

As the five Mantas headed away from the LOC spacedock, Keah envied their captains, because she would rather be out patrolling from system to system than staying here as an administrator and figurehead. She would rather “boldly go” than “patiently wait.”

“The safety of the Confederation and the human race lies in our strength and vigilance,” she transmitted to them. “Use your green priests aboard to transmit an alarm the moment you see a hint of the shadows. You'll protect our anxious populations.” Keah had to glance down at her notes to find out where this particular group was being dispatched. “Your mission will patrol to Gorhum, a vital transportation nexus near Theroc, where there's a Klikiss transportal that can be used for diplomatic travel.”

In addition to conventional space travel that made use of the modified Ildiran stardrive, the Klikiss transportals—interdimensional wormhole walls scattered on various planets—provided instantaneous transport, but only to specific worlds. The problem was, Klikiss transportals weren't always located on planets where anyone wanted to go.

The captain of the lead Manta appeared on the
Kutuzov
's screen, gave a crisp salute. “You can count on us, General.”

“Of course I can. We don't understand the new enemy just yet, but we're learning as fast as we can.” The Ildirans had shared designs for their ancient laser cannons and sun bombs, and before long, Keah would be able to equip all CDF ships with devastating weapons against the Shana Rei. The Solar Navy just dusted off the ancient designs and put them back into production without a thought of revising them; Ildirans were never known for innovation. Her own people, though, should be able to significantly improve the weapon yield with a few tweaks and adjustments. She never minded showing off human ingenuity in front of her friend and rival Adar Zan'nh.

The newly dispatched Manta cruisers flew away from the LOC and headed into interplanetary space. Before long, they engaged their stardrives and vanished.

Now, time to get down to the day's business. Within the hour, a shuttle arrived from Earth, as expected. Keah glanced at her appointment log reminder. Deputy Eldred Cain had come up for an inspection tour, accompanied by a chief weapons scientist, Jocko Krieger, who had modified the Ildiran sun bomb designs. Keah didn't know Dr. Krieger, but he looked good on paper: an ambitious type A man who would come in on assignments, bulldoze his underlings into Herculean accomplishments, and then transfer jobs to do it all over again with another seemingly impossible task. Dr. Krieger had his method down to an art, pushing his workers very close to the breaking point, and then getting out of town before they would mutiny against him. Not a strategy for making friends, Keah thought, but she couldn't argue with his track record.

She left the bridge to meet Deputy Cain and the weapons scientist down in the main launching bay. They would take a shuttle to the artificial laboratory habitat where Krieger's new-model sun bombs were being mass-produced, based on his pumped-up designs.

As she rode the lift down, habitually straightening her uniform, Keah allowed herself a faint smile. Deputy Cain was an older man, not photogenic, but unquestionably competent. He had served the Hansa's former Chairman Wenceslas, but plainly had no desire to take over the role. Cain's loyalty to the man did not extend to stupidity, however, and he had ultimately turned on Wenceslas before the corrupt Chairman could bring about the fall of human civilization. Good call, Keah thought.

She liked Deputy Cain well enough. He was quiet, no-nonsense, not full of himself, as so many politicians were. She and the Deputy had even had dinner together on his terrace on Earth while watching the nightly meteor showers caused by stray lunar fragments burning up in the atmosphere.

As Keah emerged from the lift, Deputy Cain stood next to the weapons scientist, looking quiet, unruffled, and unreadable next to the assigned shuttle. Jocko Krieger was a short and fidgety man with dark hair, eyebrows that needed a trim, and a habit of checking the time.

After a brief exchange of greetings, the scientist said, “We should head off to the weapons station. I've been in contact with my team, and their production is at full capacity, so it's a good time to show off their capabilities.” He looked at Keah with faint challenge. “I hope you weren't planning on meetings and conference room briefings? I wouldn't want to interrupt their efficient process flow.”

The General suppressed a chuckle. “Conference room briefings? You don't know me very well, Dr. Krieger. Let's get moving.” She knew how to pigeonhole the scientist now: short and stocky, scrappy, always trying to increase his stature by diminishing others. Small penis syndrome.

Krieger looked surprised. “Good, General. We'll get along just fine.”

When the scientist trudged into the shuttle, Deputy Cain gave her a quick apologetic smile. “I think he's anxious to impress you.”

“I'm willing to be impressed.”

The shuttle pilot flew them past the busy LOC spacedock operations, the cargo ships and the tugs that brought in huge structural components for new warship construction, then headed toward a more distant cluster of rubble and artificial orbiting facilities.

As they cruised toward the manufacturing installation, Dr. Krieger called up design specs on a film screen that he unrolled in front of him and presented them to Keah. “First off, General, I want to assure you that we can do better than the Ildirans. Easily.” He had a smug smile. “It's typical. For instance, their original stardrive design was ingenious, but they never even thought about improving it, and humans substantially enhanced the stardrive in only a few years. Same goes for the Ildiran process of skymining on gas giants. They plod along—we run.” He called up blueprints and calculations, 3D models. “The sun bombs are no exception. A good start—and then we add the finesse.”

Keah didn't have to follow all the technobabble he spouted; Dr. Krieger was just attempting to sell her on his confidence. “So, for a proof of concept, we manufactured a hundred sun bombs based on the old model, which is all well and good. Those have been delivered to the LOC for distribution among patrol ships.”

“A good start,” the General said. “Original-design sun bombs damaged the Shana Rei hex ships at Plumas, and they wrecked a portion of the nightshade over Theroc. Nothing to sneeze at.”

“Of course,” Krieger said, sounding dismissive nevertheless. “The sun bombs were a game changer, but I don't just want to change the game—I want to win it. My team modified the ancient designs, and now we're producing Mark II sun bombs, which should achieve at least a thirty percent increase in energy flux. In only three weeks, I've got the entire industrial installation devoted to manufacturing the new design.” His lips quirked in a hard smile. “I promised you results. You won't be disappointed.”

“Good. I hate to be disappointed.”

Through the windowports they saw the well-lit free-orbiting lab complex where weapons scientists and technicians manufactured Krieger's supersized sun bombs. Satellite storage bays were tethered to the main complex. Cargo ships delivered new materials for the assembly lines.

“My crews will keep working at full speed,” Krieger said. “I assumed you wouldn't want to interrupt their work just for an inspection? That could cost us between one and three completed sun bombs.”

Deputy Cain said to the weapons scientist, “We understand the emergency situation, Dr. Krieger. Are you certain you have the appropriate fail-safes and containment systems?”

“It's a matter of balancing priorities. Too many regulations strangle our output. If you want to be absolutely certain you won't get a paper cut on your hands, you can wear thick, metal-reinforced gloves … but you'll find it difficult to get any paperwork done.”

Over the intercom, the shuttle pilot announced, “Docking in twenty minutes.”

Krieger contacted the installation without waiting for an acknowledgment from the General. He looked like a father who was inordinately proud of a child performing in a school play. He smiled in anticipation.

But the audio that came back through the comm startled him. Station alarms ratcheted, voices shouted, and a frantic face came on the filmscreen in front of Dr. Krieger. With all the background turmoil, the General heard only snatches of words: “Rogue chain reaction” and “Emergency dampers—all of them!”

All three of them were looking at the shuttle's internal comm screen rather than directly out the windowport, which saved their eyesight when the installation suddenly blossomed into a blinding flare like a tiny sun going supernova.

The pilot reacted by swerving the shuttle at high G in a complete one-eighty turn, which threw Keah, Cain, and Krieger up against the bulkhead. The blinding light from the explosion washed over the shuttle, but the pilot raced away from the shock front until they were beyond the worst of the blast zone. “Everyone all right back there?”

“We're intact,” Keah said. “Call in emergency crews. We need to rescue any survivors, salvage what we can.”

Deputy Cain picked himself up from the deck. “There won't be any survivors, General.”

Dr. Krieger was aghast. “It's all … vaporized.”

Keah said, “Dr. Krieger, I want teams to do an immediate postmortem and restore production on the traditional Ildiran sun bombs in the meantime. We can't leave the CDF defenseless.”

Krieger whispered, “It shouldn't have … I double-checked…”

Deputy Cain said, “I will assist in selecting a new team, General. Fortunately, all their work was transmitted to a real-time off-site backup. We haven't lost anything.”

“Except for an entire weapons facility. And all those people.”

“True, General,” the Deputy said. “Except for that.”

 

CHAPTER

8

EXXOS

The Shana Rei ships lurked in the back passageways of the universe. They glided through wrinkles in space-time and made their way through folds of entropy, where they could escape the yammering pain of intelligent life-forms. Any organized atoms or chemical reactions—from DNA strands all the way up to planets and stars—sliced like sharp little knives flaying at the shadows, causing them nonstop agony.

The creatures of darkness wanted to annihilate all life, and then they themselves wanted to be erased from existence. They begged to die and thereby achieve peace, but they simply didn't know how to accomplish it.

Exxos and his black robots would have been happy to oblige the Shana Rei in this, but they were trapped among the shadows. His comrades were the only survivors of a once powerful metal swarm that should have destroyed human civilization, should have wiped out the Ildirans, but after turnabouts and repeated defeats, the black robots themselves had almost been eradicated. Almost. Now, the insane and unspeakably powerful Shana Rei were their only allies.

Exxos still didn't know if he and his robot comrades were partners of the poisonous Shana Rei, or prisoners. Or specimens.

Only a few hundred robots remained of the millions that had comprised their original swarm. Initially, the Shana Rei had torn several black robots apart, partly out of curiosity and partly for amusement before a desperate and crafty Exxos had convinced the pulsing shadows that his robots could help annihilate the biological life-forms that caused the shadows so much agony.

It was a lie, a bluff, or at the very least an exaggeration. Exxos only hoped that he and his dwindling robot cohort could find a way to escape from or—preferably—exterminate the creatures of darkness. It was what the Shana Rei wanted, after all: to die.

But Exxos needed to survive.

In order to convince the shadows of the robots' worth, he had to demonstrate as much wanton destruction as possible. Each time he and his comrades wiped out a colony, an industrial complex, a whole world, the robots increased the level of entropy in the universe and eased the pain of the Shana Rei. It was a sign of goodwill.

And because of that, the black robots would remain in existence for another day.

Trapped in the shadow void now, waiting for the next outburst from the Shana Rei, Exxos drifted among his comrades. Some robots extended reflective solar wings, though in this dark emptiness there was no light for their power films to soak up.

Enclosed within the Shana Rei entropy bubble, Exxos had no way of measuring time. It might have been a century or it might have been a millisecond since their resounding defeat above Theroc, when the humans, the Ildiran Solar Navy, the powerful verdani treeships, and even the rogue elemental faeros had fought back against the Shana Rei. Now it was time to recover, and to strike back. But the shadows were so chaotic, they did not know how.

Exxos communicated with his comrades, using open transmissions guardedly because they knew the Shana Rei were listening. The robots had a more intricately coded machine language, a private network of electronic whispers, but Exxos couldn't risk that the shadows might understand. “We must plan our next attack,” he said aloud. “Too many targets await us, and we have promised to ease the pain of the Shana Rei.”

They could plan together, but there was very little exchange of ideas, since every single one of the robots shared an identical thought grid.

Breaking from millennia of Klikiss programming and tradition, each of the black robots had synchronized their memories and personalities with those of Exxos. Previously, they had been unique individuals and therefore irreplaceable if they were destroyed. With so few robots remaining, though, Exxos could not allow that. He had copied all of their thoughts into his memory core, which was then duplicated across to the others. For the best chance of achieving their destiny,
Exxos
was the primary mind, the baseline for all remaining robots. Their individuality was subordinate to his own. It was the only safety they had.