Read The Saga of Seven Suns: Veiled Alliances Online
Authors: Kevin J. Anderson
Tags: #Fiction, #Science Fiction, #General
The Saga of Seven Suns: Veiled Alliances (5 page)
7
THARA WEN
The forest was different, and
she
was different when she came out of the wilderness and made her way back to the colony village. What had once been a blur of green and a tangle of branches and leaves, Thara Wen now saw as a mosaic of individual items—insects, twigs, specks of pollen, fallen leaves. Everything in perfect clarity and detail, everything connected. And the trees—the
worldtrees
—were a giant sentient mind, half slumbering, a network of roots and trees covering Theroc, interlinked with more connections than all the neurons in a human brain.
The forest had always been like that, but the human settlers here had never noticed. It was Thara who had changed, and she had matured far beyond her years. She could see it all now.
As she walked through the dense thickets, the underbrush seemed to move out of her way. Needing no trail, Thara glided along with the sunlight dappling her beautiful green skin. The color seemed natural to her now, a symbol of her connection to the forest.
She stepped out of the thick forest and into the main clearing where the settlement buildings had been erected. Some of the homes were prefab colony buildings dropped down from the
Caillié
supplies, while other buildings were constructed from local materials. One entire complex consisted of hollowed out chambers in the gigantic fungus conglomerations that grew like coral reefs from the worldtree trunks.
At the edge of the thick foliage, Thara paused in silence to watch the people in the village, some of them working, others looking concerned. They were familiar faces to her. She remembered them; she had known them all her life, both aboard the
Caillié
and here on Theroc.
But now she saw more
.
She spotted Sam Roper. Two strong young men were holding him by the arms while he struggled. Roper was indignant, lashing out, cursing.
The elected village leader, Norris Brovnik, stood with his arms crossed over his shirt, skeptical. As he argued with Sam Roper, Brovnik looked up and was the first to notice her standing there.
Then others cried out. “It’s Thara Wen! She’s alive after all.”
Roper struggled against the two young men holding him. “Let me go! See, she’s alive—I didn’t do anything to her.”
Norris Brovnik shook his head. “Hold him. I still want some answers.”
The dense trees masked her with greenish shadows, but when Thara stepped into the clearing, they could see that she was completely hairless, that her skin was green . . . that her entire demeanor had changed. She walked forward, amid many gasps of astonishment.
“What happened to her?”
Thara stretched out her hands to greet them all, but they seemed afraid to touch her.
The village leader ran his eyes up and down her body, amazed at the green skin. “You just vanished, Thara. We are relieved to see you safe—we’ve been searching for days.”
This surprised her. “Days?” Was that how long she had been immersed in the tree mind?
“We thought Roper had done something to you. Can you tell us what happened?”
She looked down, opened and closed her fingers, then traced a fingertip along her forearm. “Something marvelous. I don’t understand it myself, but the trees, the forest . . . the
worldforest
is more than you see. It’s more than just alive. It is awake and aware, intelligent, full of experiences, anything that has ever happened on this planet. Memories from thousands of years, and from yesterday.”
Roper looked up, his eyes shining. She stepped closer to him, not at all intimidated, and it was his turn to cringe away, but the two men continued to hold him. She was not afraid now—not of him, not of anything; she had no intention of running away. Her voice was calm, and she felt the strength of the worldforest inside her.
“I know what Sam Roper tried to do to me.” She stared at him. He opened and closed his mouth, but no words came out. “But not just to me. Through the eyes of the forest I also saw what he did to his other victims. The trees saw. The trees remember.”
“You’re lying! Look at her—she’s obviously contaminated somehow. She’s not thinking straight.”
Thara ignored the man’s outburst and looked calmly at Norris Brovnik. “Roper has an uncontrollable temper. We’ve all seen that. But he also plans, and stalks, and kills—then manages to cover his tracks. I don’t think he understands the reasons himself.”
“You have no proof!” Roper said.
Thara turned her back on him and instead looked at the other villagers. “Over the years, we know that some colonists vanished into the forest. There are hazards here on Theroc, without question. Some did die from accidents or predators . . . and sometimes the predator was Sam Roper himself.” She paused. “I can show you where three bodies are hidden.” She turned to skewer him with her gaze. “I can even recite their last words just before he killed them.”
Roper let out a laugh that sounded like an unoiled hinge. “Do you see how insane this is?”
“The forest sees everything,” Thara said. “And it forgets nothing.”
Though the skies were growing dark, she led the excavation team through the forest along paths only she could see. They carried illuminating globes, shovels and machetes, though they did not need to cut any branches out of their way. The forest cooperated with them.
With his wrists bound behind him, Sam Roper stumbled along, dragging his feet, trying to slow down the progress.
Thara guided the group unerringly to a small depression ringed by dead bushes. Roper suddenly looked pale in the harsh light of the illuminating globes.
“Gina Chadhar and Antonia Steiner,” Thara said. “It was six months ago. They disappeared on the same day.” She stopped and pointed to the depression. “Dig there.”
Some of the adults in the group gasped or moaned. Gina’s parents were among the party, and Antonia’s brother had come as well. Thara said nothing else, just stood in silent accusation as the men used their shovels to clear away the brush, the dirt. The light shone down into the depression.
The diggers did not take long to find the bones. Two skulls, a pair of rib cages . . . two bodies dumped into the same shallow grave, and the lush forest growth had quickly erased all sign.
Though Thara already knew every detail of what had happened, now she heard the sounds of grief, the sobs of lost hope, the angry curses. Sam Roper was sweating, but he made no comment.
Norris Brovnik clenched and unclenched his fists. The muscles on his jaw rippled as he struggled to control himself. Even as Thara saw all the details of this tragic tableau, she was aware of the rest of the forest, the night insects, the giant birdlike moths that flew above the canopy, the twilight-blooming orchids.
Brovnik looked at the exposed skeletons in the grave and whispered to Thara. “You said you knew of three victims? You’d better show us the other one.”
When they dug up the third skeleton an hour’s walk from the first graves, no one was surprised that Thara was right. Roper accused Thara of killing the victims, hiding the bodies, and now was framing him, but nobody believed him for a moment. He muttered angry comments that few people could understand, as if cursing at voices inside himself. His captors threw him to the ground in disgust, like garbage.
The village leader stood above him and pronounced a prompt sentence in a flat, impartial voice, as sad as it was angry. “Sam Roper, never has such a crime been committed on Theroc. When we came to this new world, we believed it was a fresh start. We had every reason to hope. We had everything we could want . . . but apparently we brought our demons as well.”
The other people muttered, nodding. Thara remained silent.
Brovnik continued, “We’ve all read the library records. We know that such crimes were common enough on old Earth, and it seems we cannot escape them, even here.” Now the village leader looked smaller, as if he wanted to be anywhere else, making any other kind of decision. Their colony on Theroc had thrived for five years. This was the worst thing that had happened under his leadership.
“We’ve not yet established a way to punish atrocities such as these. We never needed it before.” His voice became so quiet that even Thara could barely hear him. “I was foolish to hope it would never happen.”
Thara realized what she had to say, and her own voice was loud. She knew what this man had tried to do to her, what he had done to those other women. Even though fleeing from him had accidentally resulted in her wondrous transformation, she could not forgive him, nor could she allow Roper to harm anyone else.
“Leader Brovnik, take him to the top of the trees at dawn. The worldforest will know what to do.”
At sunrise, the humidity in the air acted like a veil of tiny magnifying lenses that caused the air to shimmer. Mist rose from the lush canopy as the dense forest began to awaken.
Thara Wen climbed to the highest branches along with a contingent of colonists. Some people remained back in the village, not wanting to see, but others felt compelled to watch.
Sam Roper, stripped naked, was bound wrists and ankles, crouching on an exposed branch under the open sky. He kept muttering a mantra of “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” It didn’t matter whether or not anyone accepted his apology; the villagers had made up their minds. He struggled against the cords that bound him to the branch, but he could go nowhere. Sweat poured down his face. His brown hair tangled over his eyes. “I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry.”
Thara, Brovnik, and their companions watched from a high branch, but with little pleasure. The buzz of insects filled the air, drowning out the fainter rustling of worldtree fronds. A flock of languid rose-colored moths flapped by, their wingspans more than two meters across. They circled the bound human figure curiously, then beat their wings, moving slowly away.
Suddenly, a wide, angular shadow splashed across the treetops. A large creature dove downward. The moths scattered in panic.
Sam Roper looked up and stared at the creature coming toward him.
Thara observed through her own eyes and through the senses of the forest. The most fearsome creature on Theroc—an enormous carnivorous insect with two sets of segmented wings, chitin-armored legs and body, glassy faceted eyes like a huge dragonfly that had been twisted through a nightmare machine. The few colonists who had ever seen one called it a wyvern.
Roper said in a whisper heard only by the forest, and in Thara’s head, ”Sorry,” before the wyvern grasped him with pincered forelegs, tore him free of the bindings and snapped the branch in the process, then pierced him with spearlike mandibles.
Taking its prey, the wyvern flew off, snaking a long proboscis around the blood oozing from Roper’s torn skin. In distaste, the creature tore him apart and discarded his broken body into the forest below.
Thara watched as the tiny figure plummeted into the trees. “Apparently, wyverns do not like the flavor of human flesh,” she said without a hint of sarcasm.
Norris Brovnik shook his head and turned away.
8
CAPTAIN CHRYSTA LOGAN
She was captain of the
Burton
again. It was a miracle, plain and simple.
The Ildiran Solar Navy had found the battered ship in the middle of open space and offered to take all the
Burton
colonists to a nearby planet. Strangest of all, these aliens knew how to speak Standard English.
Dario Ramirez had panicked upon seeing the swarm of spectacular alien ships surrounding them. He liked to talk though and complain to anyone who would listen; he riled up already-angry people and hadn’t thought much beyond that. He didn’t have the mettle to handle the constant flow of decisions a generation-ship captain had to make.
After little more than two days on the bridge attempting to deal with the thousand things that routinely went wrong—especially aboard the decrepit old
Burton
—he was overwhelmed. And that was just in a normal day’s work.
When the alien warliners arrived, Ramirez simply could not handle the emergency.
The Ildirans were confused and unsettled to learn about the mutiny, that the official captain was “unavailable.” To these aliens, questioning a commander was anathema.
A group of former mutineers had freed Chrysta Logan from the brig, having decided that she was the only one equipped to lead them through such a delicate time. Though the alien warliners frightened them, they understood that the Ildirans could be their salvation, and they didn’t want a short-sighted rabble rouser like Ramirez to screw things up.
Listening to the ugly, dissatisfied complaints, Ramirez had seen the way the wind was blowing, and graciously returned control to Captain Logan after the “brief misunderstanding,” on the condition that she grant amnesty to the mutineers and not press charges against him personally or seek any form or retaliation.
Sitting in the brig, Chrysta had been in no position to be picky. Given another few days, Ramirez would have ejected her from an airlock. She accepted the deal. It was a miracle, plain and simple.
They had rushed her to the
Burton
’s bridge, where she tried to grasp the situation, which was unlike any crisis she had imagined. Chrysta bluffed her way through, refusing to let the unsettled crew see any crack in her confidence.
Seated in the command chair again, Chrysta chose her words carefully when she responded to the Ildiran warship commander. Too many questions. She volunteered little information about the
Burton
, but remained attuned to the alien reactions, waiting to respond until she learned more.
“You are the generation ship
Burton
, launched from Earth long ago,” said the alien commander. “We have been searching for you for five years. We offer our assistance.”
“We could very much use your help,” she said. “You found us just in time.”
Everyone on the bridge was jittery—partly from the Solar Navy ships, partly due to anxiety that their safety now depended on the very captain they had overthrown. She glared at them, but did not address the mutiny. They seemed meek, intimidated, afraid of what she would do.
But Chrysta had given her word—no retribution. Instead, she would lead them; she was brave and strong when facing the unexpected aliens. She didn’t know how the Ildirans knew so much about the generation ships, but they seemed friendly, sincere. They even looked mostly human.
“And what is it that you want from us?” Chrysta leaned forward, staring at the image of the alien commander.
“To help you. We have rescued the other ten generation ships and also visited your Earth. We had nearly given up hope of finding you.”
The
Burton
was in such bad shape that she would accept their assistance regardless of whether she understood their reasons. The colonists didn’t have much to lose, and now Chrysta owed the Ildirans her life.
Because the generation ship had been so severely damaged in the recent ion storm, even the Ildiran warliners were limited as to how far they could take the blocky old vessel. The aliens towed the
Burton
across space to the nearest star system with a habitable planet. Dobro.
It was a pleasant world of wide open skies, dry grasslands, and a moderate climate. Centuries ago, the Ildirans had established a small settlement there, a “splinter colony,” but their population was concentrated in a single primary town. On Dobro, there would be plenty of room for the human colonists to establish a new home . . . at last.
Chrysta Logan cleaned herself up and changed into her best, though still threadbare, Captain’s uniform. She relaxed on the bridge, watching as the warliners delivered them to their new star system.
Still on their best behavior, her crew was quick to respond to her every command, hoping she would forget, or forgive, their previous rash actions. But her memory wasn’t that short, and Chrysta reminded them with pointed comments whenever she could.
She sat back, crossed one leg over the other, and smiled as the continents and cloudy skies of Dobro filled their field of view. “Always support your captain,” she reminded them. “Nobody aboard this ship is better qualified to solve problems. We’re certainly lucky the Ildirans came along when they did, aren’t we?” The crew remained intent on their stations.
Dario Ramirez was quick to agree. “Whatever you say, Captain!” He remained at a post per her promise, though his rank had been much reduced and his respect stripped down almost to nothing. Over the past day, he had volunteered whenever he could, making supportive comments; she thought he was simpering. “I’m sure we’re all glad for a chance to start over on Dobro—a new beginning, a clean slate.”
“No doubt, Mr. Ramirez.” She wondered if he heard the sarcasm.
Ildiran cutters ferried eager passengers to the Dobro spaceport, while the
Burton
’s own shuttles and cargo transports were loaded with colony supplies and made ready for departure.
First, however, Chrysta wanted to meet the head of the Ildiran colony on Dobro.
She stepped away from the landed shuttle after making sure her red headband, her best uniform, and the smile on her face were ready. The man who came forward to meet her was tall and slender; he had long ivory hair, some of which was bound in colorful ties, while other clumps blew free in the breezes. His voice was quiet, his words well considered. His facial features were arresting and extremely attractive in an exotic sort of way. At the center of his forehead, a tattoo showed a circle with a central dot. A status insignia perhaps? When he glided forward, his movements were smooth, almost pantherlike. “Captain Chrysta Logan, I am the Dobro Designate.”
She clasped his hand, shaking it briefly; he held onto it longer than was necessary. She felt a brief electric shock and wondered if these Ildirans controlled a form of telepathy or emotional magnetism. “What’s a Designate?” she asked.
“I am one of the Mage-Imperator’s sons, and I am assigned to lead this splinter colony. The welfare of every person on Dobro is in my hands. Including your people, now.”
She finally released her grasp. “Everyone aboard the
Burton
is in your debt, Designate. Especially me, because I am responsible for them. Let me be clear, you’re offering us the opportunity to found our own settlement here, to live side-by-side with you?”
“Yes, Captain Logan. Dobro is large and empty—too empty. We have room for many more colonists.” He smiled, showing off his white teeth. “You humans intrigue me.”
“We can learn much from each other, Designate. And with all those wide open spaces, you could well do with an infusion of human colonists. We’ll work together.”
“I look forward to it,” said the Dobro Designate. “It will be an interesting experiment.”
Dario Ramirez came down on the fifth shuttle, while cargo units detached and dropped from the
Burton
to land in the grassy plains outside the main Dobro settlement. All the people he had once roused to violence now worked together to unload the equipment and structures, including the modular dwelling units that had been in storage for so many years.
Like a puppy dog, Ramirez hurried up to Chrysta. “I’ll go organize the setup of our prefabs and lay out the village street grid. It’s all colony basics, Captain. We’ve been ready to go as soon as we found the right planet.” He ran off, calling over his right shoulder. “Don’t worry about a thing. You can count on me, Captain.”
She watched him go, cold and annoyed. When he was out of earshot, she muttered, “If you think I’ll actually trust you again, Mr. Ramirez, you are sadly mistaken.”