Eternity's Mind (51 page)

Tom Rom said, “Now it's neither. We'll have to go out on our own. You and I have survived that way before. We can do it again.”

She groaned. “But Pergamus … all those years, all those specimens. We can't just leave my collection!”

Tom Rom urged her toward the hole in the wall. “But we will. We've got to get to my ship.”

They were probably already out of time—and yet, realizing why the robots must have come here, a heavier responsibility made him hesitate. “Wait for me, Zoe,” he called, and ran to the main controls inside her central chamber. Time to set the sterilization routines throughout all the facilities.

He knew the access and emergency triggers, and he couldn't let these specimens fall into the hands of the inhuman enemy. He set the self-destruct mechanisms, timed vaporization blasts that would erase every cell, every virus, and every data set in the domes.

When designing the system, Tom Rom had required each dome to be triggered separately, so that a lone terrorist couldn't destroy the entire facility in a single attack. Now, though, the interlocks worked against him and caused a maddening delay. His fingers were trembling, but he steadied himself. He didn't have time for panic. Panic could cause mistakes.

When each of the fifteen domes was prepped, he adjusted the countdown to give enough time to reach his ship—barely enough time.

Overhead, the Shana Rei shadow cloud loomed in the sky as if intending to smother the planet. Black tendrils reached down toward the surface.

He joined Zoe out in the corridor and forced her along. Running, they ducked through one blasted wall after another. Carrying her duffel, she was disoriented, but not just from the terror and the chaos. She simply hadn't been outside her chamber often enough to know the layout of her own research dome.

“My ship's engines are powerful, and I know how to fly. I have the incentive.” He gave her a hard look. “I have to warn you, though, we could just as well die on our way out.”

Zoe ran along. “You'll save me.”

He steeled himself and silently swore that he would not let her down.

 

CHAPTER

97

XANDER BRINDLE

The Relleker salvage field was already a disaster, but Elisa Enturi's arrival made the situation worse. Xander felt a deep chill go down his spine. He turned to Terry. “What the hell is she doing here?”

Terry was aghast. “Kett Shipping broke all ties with Iswander Industries because of her—and now she wants … a job? We're just supposed to forget everything she did?”

Roamer salvage ships closed around Elisa's ship, which hung there, waiting. Xander couldn't comprehend what she could have been thinking.

“Our unemployment situation isn't that desperate,” Xander muttered. He gathered his courage and opened the comm. “Elisa, I don't know what you had in mind, but you're an outlaw and a murderer. There's no place for you here.”

A grizzled, hatchet-faced old woman, Annie D, grumbled on the comm screen, “Take her into custody and haul her ass back to Newstation where she can face justice. We've got enough ships.” Annie D wore an eyepatch over her right eye, which she had lost due to ocular cancer. Med techs could have replaced the eye, but she seemed to prefer the affectation of the patch. Now, her visage looked fierce.

From his battered ship, old Omar Selise barked, “Stand down, Enturi—we outgun you twenty to one, and we have no incentive to exercise restraint. The Duquesnes were friends of mine.”

As more ships surrounded Elisa, she activated her own defensive weapons. Xander was surprised at how utterly unrepentant the woman seemed. “You can try to capture me, but you won't be happy with how it turns out. I did not come here for a firefight. I offered my services to work.”

Xander opened the comm and used his most reasonable voice, which he doubted would be sufficient. “Elisa, we'll escort you to Rendezvous, see that you get a fair hearing. No need for shooting.”

Terry added, “Would you rather serve a prison sentence or have your ship join the shrapnel here at Relleker? These people are ready to shoot.”

In response, Elisa opened fire—at the
Verne.

“Whoa!” Terry said, holding on.

Linked to the piloting controls on full standby, OK reacted even more swiftly than Terry or Xander could. He put the
Verne
into a corkscrew spin and accelerated upward so that Elisa's deadly blasts streaked past. One jazer beam skimmed the shields, while the others missed them entirely.

“Excellent work, OK.” Terry looked ashen.

Xander was impressed. “Good thing we paid for all those new systems.”

The other Roamers began to open fire as Elisa accelerated away.

The compy reported, “I should inform you that Elisa Enturi's weapons were not set to low-intensity or damage-only bursts. That shot was meant to kill. We would have been destroyed if I had not evaded.”

“Well, thank you very much,” Xander muttered.

Spinning about, Elisa's ship raced through the Relleker debris field, heading out of planetary orbit. Seven Roamer ships pursued her, ready for the kill.

“I would have been a good asset to your operations,” Elisa shot back to the
Verne,
her voice icy. “I would have made you great profits. I already
did
make you great profits.” She dodged the sharklike wreckage of a robot ship, then swooped around, opening fire so that she incapacitated Annie D's craft. The two Selise ships closed in, taking potshots, presumably to damage Elisa's engines and stop her ship, but their aim was terrible. Elisa dodged and flew, racing toward the sparser debris in outer orbit, where she could accelerate harder.

Xander looked at Terry. “We did invest in the best engines money could buy. Let's see what the
Verne
can do.”

“You're on!” Terry said.

“Shall I pilot?” OK asked.

Xander and Terry both shook their heads. “Not on your life.”

The
Verne
's acceleration was powerful, but smooth, like a velvet glove shoving them back into their seats. They swiftly overtook the other pursuers and raced past them. Xander used all of his concentration to fly. Fortunately, the
Verne
's delicate response systems and improved maneuverability were just as good as the enhanced speed.

Terry worked the weapons grid, worried. “I was planning to test all these systems out, but under controlled circumstances.” He let out a quick exhale. “I suppose there's no time like the present.”

OK also studied the full systems displays. “All modules optimal. Our jazers should be sufficient to knock out her engines. Our targeting systems are highly calibrated.”

“Good, then this should all be over in just a few minutes,” Xander said.

The
Verne
leaped ahead like a greyhound reaching the end of a race, closing in on their quarry. Elisa's ship soared out of the planetary system, dodging the Roamer weapons fire and pulling away from the pursuers. Xander was surprised at how well she was doing. He doubted her engines were superior to any of these ships', but she did have one thing in her favor—she had nothing left to lose. She was willing to burn out all of her systems just to get away.

Xander didn't plan on letting her do that. They closed in on her ship, and OK and Terry enlarged the targeting cross. “Last chance, Elisa,” he called.

“You owe me,” she said back, “but I don't owe anything to you. We're clear.”

Behind them, one of the reckless pursuing Roamers squawked with a distress emergency. “Damn! We just got winged by spaceship debris. We're damaged, leaking air! Life-support systems failing.”

Xander gritted his teeth. It was instinctive to turn around and help any other ship in distress, but he kept his eyes forward, focusing on Elisa. There were plenty of other ships that could help the damaged craft. But if Elisa got away, she might never be brought to justice.

“Ready to open fire,” Terry said, swallowing hard. “You sure about this, Xander?”

“I'm sure, but let's try not to blow her out of space. I'd much rather see her make excuses in front of a clan jury.”

Xander accelerated the
Verne.
Elisa's ship had reached open space, far enough from all except for the last few hulks of Relleker ships. Xander recalled, just for a fraction of a second, how Elisa had approached them at Ulio Station, offering two young traders the deal of the century—exclusive distribution rights to ekti-X. This woman had made a fortune for Kett Shipping, but in the end, just as Rlinda feared, the money had blood on it.

Together, he and Terry activated the firing controls.

Elisa seemed to sense the oncoming barrage. She adjusted course at the last instant. Instead of a direct hit on her engines, the
Verne
's jazer blasts hammered her shields at full force, caused them to collapse, and then scored her lower hull.

But she impetuously activated her stardrive, and the engines flared even as the
Verne
closed in. Battered, damaged, yet still functional, Elisa's ship flashed away into lightspeed, escaping into trackless infinity.

An instant later, the
Verne
flew through the empty spot in space where her ship had been. In frustration, Xander slammed his fist on the control panel.

OK announced, unnecessarily, “She escaped.”

“She didn't have time to set a course,” Terry said. “Who knows where she went.”

“We might get lucky,” Xander muttered. “Maybe she accidentally flew into a black hole.”

Shaking his head, he eased back on their engines, spun around, and headed toward Relleker, in case some damaged Roamer ships still needed assistance.

 

CHAPTER

98

ORLI COVITZ

Bursting with their new understanding about the bloater clusters and the enormous, sentient mind they comprised, Orli was excited to meet the Kellum production staff. They headed up to the bridge of the large ship that served as the ops center for the Kellum extraction field.

As soon as they reached the old bridge, a blustering Del Kellum came in to greet them. “We used to have a giant skymine at Golgen with big skies and all the elbow room you could want. We're a lot cozier aboard a bunch of mothballed ships, but, by damn, it's much easier to harvest ekti-X from bloaters than in the clouds of a gas giant.”

Orli burst out, “But there's something you don't know! These bloaters are more important than you think.”

Arita nodded briskly. “Orli and I just figured out what they really are.”

Zhett looked out the bridge windowport, made a broad gesture with her hand. “The bloaters are appearing everywhere, like naturally occurring fuel tanks. The clusters aren't even hard to find. Cheap ekti will be commonplace before long.”

Patrick was more serious. “That's why we'd better bank a decent profit soon.”

“Everybody needs stardrive fuel. We can still make it economically feasible if we keep our operations efficient,” Del said, then added with a snort, “Remember, we weren't making much money at our Kuivahr distillery either.”

Outside, as the ships and extractors flitted among the bloaters, another sequence of bright flashes ignited in the nuclei of the nodules. Orli flinched and then smiled with wonder, while Arita gasped beside her, grabbing her arm to share the connection. A wide-eyed Collin clutched his treeling and muttered reports to all the connected green priests.

Orli pointed out the windowport. “Did you see that? The bloaters are part of something that's bigger than we can imagine. They're gigantic cells with nuclei, parts of a coalescing mind.”

Arita nodded. “Those flashes are like neural impulses, a sequence of thoughts as the great mind awakens. It's an emerging cosmic sentience—I don't know how else to explain it. Those scattered chains and clusters of bloaters are akin to ganglia.”

Zhett laughed out loud at the idea, while Patrick remained skeptical. Del just blinked as if trying to be sure he had heard correctly.

DD interrupted, like a small compy lecturer. “Shana Rei shadow clouds have spontaneously appeared throughout the Spiral Arm. We know that more bloaters are also appearing, and they are demonstrably connected across interstellar space in huge, diffuse structures. We have also seen recent reports that some of the Shana Rei shadow clouds are collapsing spontaneously, as if from an external force. Perhaps there is a connection.”

“There is definitely a connection,” Orli said. “It is Eternity's Mind, and it's awakening. It made us both understand. Just as the Shana Rei returned, so did this cosmic sentience—and it's the only thing strong enough to fight the shadows.”

Del Kellum made a loud rumbling sound in his throat. “By damn! Are you telling me these bloaters are … the mind of God? And we're waking it up?”

Orli's voice was firm. “We're trying to tell you that it's huge and it's aware—and it's also aware of us, and of the Shana Rei.”

“And it's on our side,” Arita said.

As if the great diffuse mind could hear their conversation, the nearby bloaters sparkled in sequence, brighter than before. Strobing lights raced around the cluster, like a flurry of thought. With the flashes, Orli felt a shudder go through her mind and body like a lightning bolt connected to her brain. She reeled, nearly overwhelmed.

Garrison hurried over to support her, but for the moment she was so inundated with energy and wonders that she couldn't talk. Orli clenched her teeth and closed her eyes, but she still felt all the colors and flares swimming around her mind. Behind her closed eyes she saw deep crimson and bright scarlet swirled with black and gray, then sparks of brilliant intensity. She did feel a connection. A communication.