Eternity's Mind (48 page)

But if Iswander had stood by Elisa, what then? He would have taken the fall along with her, and if he had refused to turn her in to the authorities, then there might well have been a war—one that she was sure Iswander Industries would lose.

No, allowing her to slip away and stay free was probably his best choice as well as her best chance in the long run, because she didn't have any good chances at all.…

Elisa had to make her own future, and in order to do so she would call in other favors. She had certainly earned enough of them during her years of hard work. By granting Xander Brindle and Terry Handon exclusive ekti-X distribution rights, she had made them a fortune. They owed her.…

The planet Relleker was damaged and dead, its cloudy skies stained black. Smoke and wildfires still raged across the continents after the robots' devastator bombs, and only radioactive wastelands remained of the cities. The wreckage of ships created an obstacle course in orbit. As she flew in, she scanned the debris of CDF Mantas, the shrapnel of thousands of private and commercial vessels. She doubted many had gotten away.

Among the orbiting junk, she spotted more than a dozen active ships rounding up the largest remnants. She eavesdropped on their comm channels and, as expected, identified them as Roamer salvage ships, tugs gathering semi-intact vessels and large hull sections, which would be delivered to Rendezvous. Exosuited figures flitted about, stripping out engine components, disengaging large modules, and setting them free so they could drift to corral points.

Elisa maintained radio silence as she cruised closer, still observing, still listening. One group of people herded small drifting objects and arranged them in a stable array, tethered together. For a moment, judging by their general shape, she thought they were large ekti cylinders; then she realized they were human bodies, stiff corpses retrieved from the destroyed ships, now frozen in space.

Elisa guessed she would have to start at the bottom if she meant to work for Xander and Terry. Maybe there was no deeper bottom than being forced to retrieve cadavers and stack them in space. If she were asked to do that, she would accept the job, because she had to start somewhere … but she would demand respect, no matter what. She had lost too much already.

So many Roamer ships were flitting around the reclamation operations that no one noticed Elisa at first; they all simply assumed she had come to work just as the rest of them had. A smiling but harried Xander Brindle came over the general comm channel. “It's slim pickings around here, and a lot of these ships are just lemons—but we're going to make lemonade, to use a sour old cliché.” He chuckled at his own joke.

Terry Handon's voice broke in, “I hate to point out, Xander, but there'll be a lot more salvage at Earth.”

Xander balked. “I'm … I'm not ready for that yet. Thank the Guiding Star that my parents and Rlinda Kett got away.”

Terry came onscreen, taking a seat next to his partner in the
Verne
's piloting deck. “But about five billion people didn't.”

Elisa frowned. Something had happened on Earth? She had been out of communication contact since leaving Newstation. After she tapped into the appalling database reports and learned of the Shana Rei attack there, she decided it was time to announce herself. “If you need someone to manage operations at Earth, I'll do the job, Xander Brindle—you know I'll do it. Put me in charge if no one else wants the responsibility.”

On the screen, he recognized her with a surge of astonishment. “Elisa Enturi, what the hell are you doing here?”

“I'm joining your salvage operations. I am no longer employed by Iswander Industries. I gave you ekti-distribution across the Spiral Arm, and now I request the same consideration in return. I need a position.” She hardened her expression and leaned closer to the screen. “You know I'm competent. Let me work for you.”

Terry cringed. “Not in a million years!”

“I was looking for a slightly less permanent position than that,” she said.

A bearded old clan leader broke in on the comm channel. “Shizz, Xander—you know who that is? Suck it down a black hole, that's Elisa Enturi! The bitch wiped out the clan Duquesne operations. She's got blood on her hands, and a price on her head.”

Elisa was immediately alert. “Clan Duquesne provoked me, and it's none of your business.”

“It is our business,” Terry said. “All the Roamer clans want you brought to justice. We have to take you in.”

Xander was flushed. “You attacked and tried to kill my parents!”

More than twenty Roamer ships raced toward her vessel, converging in among the debris. They were not large battleships, but she knew that every Roamer craft had significant defensive weaponry. All their systems were activated.

But Elisa's ship had weaponry too.

 

CHAPTER

91

ZOE ALAKIS

Tom Rom's new Klikiss samples were interesting, but useless for Zoe's purposes. The royal jelly specimens taken from alien cadavers were ineffective as a treatment for the more virulent strain of the Onthos plague.

Safe inside her sterile chamber, Zoe studied the records again. Tom Rom had taken many images of the Klikiss ruins on Llaro, but she didn't care about Klikiss architecture, culture, or history. With the insect race gone from the Spiral Arm, what did that matter?

What fascinated her was the alien plague itself, the viral specimen he had brought in his own bloodstream as the plague raged through his body; it was the closest he had ever come to death, and he had done it for her. Responding to news of the exotic disease spreading through the derelict Onthos space city, he had arrived too late. Every member of clan Reeves was dead, and the only infected person still alive had been Orli Covitz. Zoe didn't know the details, but he had obtained the specimen from Orli, and gotten infected in the process.

True to his promise, he had used his last efforts to return to Pergamus and give Zoe what she'd requested—this sample, which she now held in her hands.

Though it went against her better judgment, she studied the specimen inside her sterile dome. Tom Rom would have been extremely upset if he knew the risk Zoe took when she transferred a sealed vial teeming with the mutated plague organism.

She had already studied the medical data from clan Reeves, as well as ancient archival information about the original Onthos epidemic, all of which she had gained from King Peter and Queen Estarra in exchange for the Pergamus database on Prince Reynald's illness. His debilitating microfungus infection was far less interesting to her than the Onthos plague, but even though the Confederation had destroyed Rakkem as promised, Zoe disliked the idea of making bargains. It left her vulnerable, and she didn't want to give up proprietary information.

Zoe kept the sealed plague specimen in her private chamber. Although she wore gloves and a breathing mask, she knew that would not be sufficient if the specimen got loose. She normally kept herself so protected, so perfectly clean against all deadly organisms. Now that she had this sample vial right in front of her, she felt as if she were facing a monster. It gave her a secret thrill.

She admired the rare plague organism more than she liked to admit. Of all the germs, viruses, and parasites that proliferated by killing human beings, this one was the most perfect lethal organism—and Pergamus was filled with lethal organisms. Zoe had been obsessed with pathogens for most of her life. How could she not be enthralled with this one?

Zoe was annoyed to be disturbed from her study of the marvelous specimen when the perimeter sensors around Pergamus set off alarms. She wondered what intruder was bothering them now. Probably some pathetic dying person who wanted her to offer a magic cure, as if Pergamus sold such things like Rakkem did. The Pergamus mercenary forces always managed to drive the intruders away. Nothing good ever came of unannounced visitors.

The alarms were louder than ever, more insistent, and Zoe caught her breath as she glanced at the screen. In an image taken from orbit, she saw a gash open up in space. Inky black shadows spilled out like the oozing blood of night, and black hexagonal cylinders came through, surrounded by a cocoon of shadows.

A sharp cold flowed down her spine. Tom Rom had warned her of the Shana Rei threat, but Zoe had never taken it seriously. Not here. Now she stared in disbelief. The threat couldn't possibly be real.

Like angry hornets from a smashed nest, black robot ships swarmed out by the thousands. Her mercenary fleet shouted alarms, and Pergamus facility-lockdown systems engaged. Klaxons rang out, and flashing magenta lights strobed through the corridors and sealed labs, calling everyone to full emergency status.

Tom Rom's voice crackled across the open intercom, barking orders to the mercenary ships. “Stand your ground—attack the intruders! Do not let them approach Pergamus.” His command was bold but absurd. Her mercenary fleet was only large enough to drive away curiosity seekers; they could never stand against this.

To their credit, five mercenary ships plunged toward the robot vessels, opening fire. Their jazers even destroyed two robot ships before the defenders were vaporized—all of them. Her other ten perimeter patrol ships turned about and fled the system.

The shadow cloud headed straight for Pergamus.

Zoe was aware of what had happened at Earth and Relleker. The black robots had devastated those planets, obliterated every city on the surface. The small Pergamus outpost didn't stand a chance.

The Shana Rei cloud expanded as it came closer. The first group of robot ships plunged into the poisonous atmosphere, but they did not open fire, did not drop devastation bombs. This was obviously a different kind of assault from before. The invaders did not mean just to destroy—not at first. The black robot ships were descending to the surface for some other purpose.

Zoe felt a deeper cold of terror and anger as she guessed that they intended to seize the assets of Pergamus. All the plague samples.

Tom Rom's face appeared on the screen. “I am coming for you, Zoe. I'll get you out of here—no matter what it takes.”

Then she heard the first explosion. It resonated through the main outer dome—but it was not from a robot attack. Tom Rom had detonated a shaped charge that blasted through the first of the seventeen decontamination locks. He was breaching the barriers. He was going to rush inside her sterile dome and save her.

She knew he would.

She got ready.

 

CHAPTER

92

GENERAL NALANI KEAH

It felt damned good to be flying the
Kutuzov
alongside the Solar Navy warliners again. General Keah felt strong and confident as she looked out at the forty-nine magnificent alien ships, with their exotic design and extended solar-sail fins. After the ass-kicking she had received at Earth and Relleker, she needed some real payback.

Sitting on the bridge of her Juggernaut, she let the excitement and anger build. She leaned forward to address the screen image of Adar Zan'nh, who stood in the command nucleus of his own flagship. “I feel good about this, Z. It'll be a sucker punch to the damn shadows—a real kick in the balls.”

Zan'nh seemed confused by her comment. “I'm not certain that such anatomical references are applicable to the Shana Rei.”

“It's a metaphor, Z. Don't be so literal.” Come to think of it, she had never asked about the testicular arrangement of Ildirans either, although she supposed the appropriate parts must be similar, since they could interbreed with humans.

The
Kutuzov
and the
Okrun
were the CDF's two remaining Juggernauts, and she had forty-five Manta cruisers that were functional enough to fight. After the retreat from Earth, CDF engineers had worked around the clock, using the commercial spacedock facilities at Theroc to make repairs. She had made her priorities clear. “It doesn't have to be pretty, but it does have to work—at least for one more engagement.” All of her soldiers knew the stakes.

They had rounded up a good portion of the ships that were still available to fight for the Confederation. Some remained at Theroc to defend the capital, but Keah—and everyone else for that matter—knew that
all
of the remaining defenses would not be sufficient against a frontal attack from the Shana Rei. They had to defeat the shadows some other way, and this was it. The mission into the void would be an all-or-nothing gamble. They would never have a second chance to hit the Shana Rei by surprise.

A substantial and intimidating fleet of nearly a hundred battleships, Confederation and Ildiran, was on its way to the nebula. Ahead of them, Fireheart blazed in its ionized splendor, and at its core burned a cluster of gargantuan stars that ignited the entire sea of gases.

“Approaching the dust boundary, General,” said Lieutenant Tait. “It might get a little bumpy.”

“Plenty of Roamers fly through with their junk-heap ships all the time,” she said. “Stay steady and keep our shields at full strength.”

The Ildiran warliners retracted their solar-sail fins, and the strike force plunged through the boundary where photonic pressure from the core stars had piled up interstellar dust. The passage was somewhat rough, but the hundred ships held on and passed safely through into the diffuse sea.

Keah snorted. “That was nothing more than potty ripples compared to getting away from Earth a week ago.”

“When you put it that way, General…” said her first officer.

She had seen a diagram of the Roamer facilities inside Fireheart Station, but she was even more impressed when she saw floating frames covered with stretched-out energy films for power blocks, huge scoops to harvest exotic isotopes, as well as the scientific, admin, and habitation units.

“Radiation levels are high, sir,” said Sensor Chief Saliba, “but tolerable, with a little extra shielding.”