Hidden Empire (27 page)
R
eturning to his clan holdings under the ice sheath of Plumas, Jess Tamblyn found his old father as stern and crotchety as
ever. It gave him all the more reason to look for any excuse to return to Rendezvous as soon as possible. He still hadn’t
been able to see Cesca.
Bram Tamblyn had dark, eager eyes that flashed as Jess talked about Ross’s activities on Golgen, but after a moment the old
clan leader held up a calloused hand. “Enough. We won’t waste time spreading gossip about a man who is no longer part of our
family.” This stubborn game had gone on for years, and Jess doubted anything would change.
Living close to his father was stifling. Within a week Jess had concocted urgent duties that required him to fly back to Rendezvous.
His younger sister Tasia had begged to come along, and Jess took pity on her. “She’ll be fine, Dad,” he said, “and who knows,
this time we may even track down the
Burton.”
Bram gave a snort. “Our clan is making enough money in the solid-water business. No need for you to shirk your duties and
go chasing myths.”
“I would never shirk my duties, Dad—you know that. But the
Burton
exists. It’s still out there, somewhere.” The large, slow-moving vessel was the only one of the original eleven generation
ships that had never been found.
“Even if you recovered it, it would be an old wreck by now, worth nothing.”
“Worth a place in history, Dad,” Tasia said brightly.
Bram covered his indulgent smile with a sour look, and Jess hurried to his personal spacecraft with his young sister in tow.
Tasia’s personal compy EA started to follow them, but the girl quickly thought of several busywork tasks and sent the compy
away.
By the time they reached the cracked frozen surface of the moon, he and Tasia were already chuckling with each other. They
flew away from the water-pumping stations that penetrated the miles-thick icecap where hydrostatic pressure squeezed liquid
water up to supply posts on the surface.
“Can I fly?” Tasia sat beside him, eager to take the spaceship controls.
He shot his sister an appraising look. She was young and spunky, just turning sixteen, and glad to be anywhere but Plumas.
She had a button nose, blue eyes, and ragged brown hair that she cut herself whenever it grew too long and annoying. Her snappy
wit made her delightful as a traveling companion but wicked as a verbal opponent if anyone tried to insult her.
“Will the ship take that kind of abuse?” he asked.
“I’d call it exercise.”
“Later,” he said. “Right now I’m only interested in getting out of here. I’ll let you dock at Rendezvous.”
As Plumas dwindled behind them and Jess set course, Tasia called up his past expedition logs. “Are we really going to look
for the
Burton
again? Found any new clues?”
“No, that was just an excuse to bring you along before Dad could find a way to keep you occupied.” He stared into the streaming
stars. “I don’t think the
Burton
will ever be found, given the time and distance and the hazards of space. Losing only one out of eleven generation ships
seems an acceptable percentage to me, considering their old-fashioned technology.”
Tasia gave him a quirky smile. “Probably a better chance of finding the
Burton
than of re-establishing peace between Dad and Ross.”
Jess sighed. “Still, it’s our responsibility to work hard to soften the old man’s heart. Ross is getting married to Cesca
in a year or so, and we can use that as an excuse to tie our family together.”
Tasia, too warm after living under the ice sheet, adjusted the temperature inside the ship. “He’ll come around, Jess. Dad
is too smart a businessman to keep up a feud with the husband of the new Speaker.”
“You may be right.” Jess let her take the controls and went to make them some pepperflower tea, hoping to avoid further discussion
of the subject of marriage. Every time he thought of the upcoming wedding, his heart felt heavy and he was afraid his love
for Cesca Peroni would show on his face.
Tasia was always delighted to see the glittering asteroids and artificial structures of Rendezvous, and Jess was likewise
delighted to see the joy on his sister’s face.
Clan representatives came forward to greet them in a flurry of layered cloaks and jerkins, all embroidered with family markings
and beautiful designs. Already considering her own marriage prospects, Tasia flirted with the young men, though she would
no doubt be even pickier than her father.
Rendezvous was a place where all Roamers could speak their minds, make business deals, leave messages for extended groupings,
interact with cousins and distant family members. Because the clan units were small, exchanging unmarried men and women was
vital to keeping their culture and their people strong.
Tasia dashed off to speak with friends her own age. Adaptable to the asteroids’ low gravity, she scuttled through the tunnel
complexes, running toward the domed greenhouses. She hadn’t bothered to retrieve her spacesuit from Jess’s ship, but if she
wanted to venture outside, there would be plenty of skin-suits for her to borrow. She could always rig something up.
With a mixture of dread and eagerness, Jess crossed a transparent connectube to the central asteroid, where he would at last
deliver formal greetings to Cesca from Ross. Ancient Jhy Okiah clasped his hand in a sinewy grip, then flipped a glance at
her protégée, who couldn’t tear her eyes off of him.
Self-consciously, the Speaker found urgent business. “If you two will excuse me, I have an appointment with the mother of
Rand Sorengaard. Her clan wishes to submit formal apologies for her son’s actions.”
He and Cesca looked at each other in silence. Jess could barely cover his grin of admiration for her. Cesca’s olive skin and
dark hair drew him like a magnet. She smiled with her generous mouth. “It’s good to see you again, Jess,” she said, a bit
too formally.
He was forced to respond with a stiff bow, sweeping his cape to one side. “When last I was at Golgen, my brother charged me
with delivering you a set of greetings. He expects the Blue Sky Mine to turn a profit this year at last.”
Jess opened a voluminous pocket in his embroidered vest. He withdrew a strand of metallic black spheres, a necklace of ebony
skypearls. He held it up in the artificial light. Cesca’s dark eyes looked more beautiful to him than the midnight sheen of
the valuable gems.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen skypearls before,” Cesca said. “And I certainly don’t own any. I don’t know what to say, except
for you to pass along my thanks to him.”
The tiny spherical nodules were formed inside ekti reactor chambers, concentrated impurities taken from the atmospheric samples
during harvesting. Skypearls clung to the walls of the reactors and were occasionally found during routine cleaning. Ross
had been saving them for years, one or two at a time. He had given his fiancée a string of twenty-five, worth a fabulous fortune.
Jess dropped them into the soft palm of her hand, letting his fingers brush hers so he could feel an instant of her touch.
His skin prickled with a flush of sweat. This encounter was sweet agony.
Jess tried to think of something to say in the uncomfortable lull in their conversation, because he did not dare voice the
words he longed to speak. Cesca withdrew to a too-careful distance, and her lips parted as if ready to whisper something.
Then, bounding through the low-gravity tunnels, pushing off with boots and hauling along with strong fingers, a broad-shouldered
man burst into the Speaker’s chambers. “I need to see Jhy Okiah right away.” He looked around, taking in the two young lovers
but dismissing them. Then suddenly he recognized Jess. “Shizz! This concerns clan Tamblyn! Oh, but I have terrible news. Where’s
the Speaker?”
Jess recognized Del Kellum, a clan leader and manager of the massive hidden shipyards in the rings of Osquivel. Sometimes,
Kellum served as a cargo driver, just moving with restless feet among the other Roamer settlements and facilities. He was
a middle-aged man, hale and gregarious, but now he looked terror stricken.
“What is it?” Jess asked. “Weren’t you supposed to make the most recent run from the Blue Sky Mine?”
Cesca stepped forward. “I am the Speaker’s representative. You may deliver your news to me. What’s happened?”
“Blue Sky Mine is gone!” Kellum said. “Destroyed! I was inbound to Golgen when we heard an emergency message. They said they
were under attack by some strange kind of spacecraft that came up from deep in the clouds. Said they’d never seen anything
like it before.”
He gulped air, and his breath hitched. “But when I got there, I found only a few floating pieces of wreckage blasted into
high orbit, and a faint residue of contaminants and smoke in the cloud layer that Ross liked to mine.”
Despite the low gravity of Rendezvous, Jess slumped backward, unable to keep his balance. He reached out, and Cesca instinctively
grasped his hand in disbelief. “What about the escape pods?” Jess said. “The flight deck. Ross should’ve been able to get
his crew away.”
“Nothing,” said Del Kellum. “It’s all gone. Somebody, something, struck without warning and killed every living soul on the
Blue Sky Mine.”
W
ith heroism, passion, and romance, the saga of the Ildiran Empire continued to unfold. As senior rememberer at the court of
the Mage-Imperator Cyroc’h, Vao’sh kept alive the legends and history of his people for the next generation of fascinated
listeners.
He remained attuned to any reports of dramatic incidents across the Spiral Arm. Though peaceful times were more pleasant for
a population to live in, they made for poor storytelling. Until now, the splinter colony on Crenna had had no standing in
the
Saga of Seven Suns
, appearing merely as a footnote, more for bookkeeping purposes than dramatic ones. It was only a fledgling settlement, the
birthplace of no great heroes. Unremarkable.
Following the blindness plague, however, the tragedy of Crenna would comprise many dark stanzas. It was a rememberer’s job
to make certain it would never be lost.
After enduring a lengthy quarantine aboard Adar Kori’nh’s warliners, the evacuated survivors were welcomed back to Mijistra,
shaken but relieved. The colonists looked weak and damaged, but under the never-waning light of Ildira’s seven suns, the survivors
felt through the
thism
the healing presence of their godlike Mage-Imperator. Here, they would recover… but they would never forget.
Vao’sh needed to hear and then compile the true story of what had happened. The
Saga
had to be accurate, as well as compelling.
Taking meticulous care with his toilette, Vao’sh oiled the expressive lobes on his lumpy face. His flush colors would be prominent
and bright as he spoke the story aloud to all enraptured listeners, once he had taken it into his heart and learned it in
detail.
To protect his throat and his voice, Vao’sh drank his daily mixture of warm syrups, then sang wordless notes to keep his lucent
voice in its proper range. Then he went to his first meeting with Dio’sh, the only surviving rememberer from Crenna.
Vao’sh met his younger kithman on a sun-soaked deck of the Prism Palace. Dio’sh had closed his eyes and placed his hands palms
up on a polished tabletop, as if the brilliant sunlight could purge him of the taint of nightmares. Dio’sh retained a perfect,
horrific recollection of everything he had experienced.
Seeing his expected visitor, Dio’sh turned his expressive eyes toward the master historian. The younger rememberer’s sense
of relief was apparent as his fleshy lobes colored with appreciation and respect. “I am honored that you’ve come to speak
to me, Rememberer Vao’sh. I am eager to share what I know, though I am afraid to relive it.”
“Rememberers do not create stories,” Vao’sh reminded him, “we merely tell them. And we must tell them accurately and well.”
Dio’sh bowed his head. “I will do my best, Rememberer.”
Vao’sh waited, saw his comrade summoning a host of terrifying thoughts. The coloration of his skin began to turn grayish,
as if he faced an insurmountable fear. Dio’sh flinched.
“Crenna,” Vao’sh nudged. “You were there. You were witness to the courage, the tragedy, the unstoppable events.” He reached
out to touch the historian’s trembling hand. “If you do not pass on your impressions, then all the tragedy that occurred will
be for naught. The victims and the heroes must be remembered. You are a rememberer, Dio’sh.”
The younger man took a deep breath and opened his eyes, still looking haunted but now more determined. “Ildiran splinter colonies
have endured sickness before,” Dio’sh began. “We remember the losses of children and families who succumbed to fevers, toxins,
or genetic diseases. But this …” He looked up sharply, his lobes flushing scarlet. “What sort of vindictive plague would first
steal our
sight
, take from us the comfort of blessed light—and then make us die alone in quarantine, isolated from other Ildirans, lest we
continue to spread this terrible disease?”
