Of Fire and Night (25 page)

60

ZHETT KELLUM

G
olgen’s hydrogen-rich clouds turned a lemony tan in the spreading rays of sunrise. Floating free above the sky-ocean was a lot better than being cramped with the humorless Kowalski clan members at Forrey’s Folly. Zhett’s father was right—skymining was what Roamers were born to do.

Early Golgen cloud harvesters had discovered a thin temperate zone where the oxygen and nitrogen balance created pockets of habitability. When a skymine cruised in this layer, containment fields, oxygen condensers, and heaters allowed for an open deck. Zhett could stand here all by herself and listen to the winds whistling across the storm bands.

The empty skies seemed an unsettling and lonely place punctuated by rising chemical plumes. She watched, attuned for any sort of stirring below. Would she see an ominous ripple in the cloudbanks if a warglobe were to cut through the mists? This was the first place the drogues had ever struck, destroying the Blue Sky Mine in misguided retaliation for the Big Goose’s Klikiss Torch test.

Yes, the Big Goose certainly had a talent for pissing people off. She gripped the red-painted rail. The metal was cold, but she squeezed hard, imagining it might be someone’s scrawny neck. Someone like Patrick Fitzpatrick III . . .

Zhett shook her head to clear her thoughts. Supposedly, the Kellum skyminers had nothing to worry about from hydrogues. If Jess Tamblyn had pronounced Golgen free of the enemy, then she believed him. She had flirted with the handsome man when he’d delivered water from Plumas, but she could tell that Jess’s heart belonged to someone else—someone whose love caused him more pain than joy. But though he was smitten with another woman and didn’t know a good thing when Zhett offered it to him, she was sure Jess had never lied to her. Unlike certain other people . . .

“Out to watch the early morning operations, my sweet?”

Her father wore a warm vest and kept gloves clipped to his belt. Even filtered and tamed by the containment field, the brisk wind made her cheeks rosy. “What difference does the hour make, Dad? You keep operations going around the clock.”

Kellum laughed. “It’s good to see that my baby daughter understands business. You’ll be a fine facility manager someday.”

Sinuous probes dropped into the upwelling atmosphere as the skymine drifted along. Intake and feed tanks gulped gaseous mixtures into separating chambers and ekti reactors, which converted hydrogen into stardrive fuel. Waste gases spilling from the exhaust funnel propelled the facility along. Maintenance ships flitted around the perimeter. Suited workers in jetpacks circled the junctions of the modules, inspecting the process lines.

“Our fourth skymine just came online,” Kellum said. “Without drogues nipping at our asses, the fast condensers and on-the-fly ekti reactors are just as efficient as these big rigs. We’ll fill a cargo escort every two days.”

“More fuel than we could ever need.” She held on to her father’s thick arm.

“Let’s not go overboard. After all these years of austerity and rationing, we’ve got a lot of ground to make up.”

After leaving Forrey’s Folly, former Kellum employees had flown back to Osquivel. In the darkness high above the ecliptic, charged with enthusiasm, they retrieved all their equipment. With a safe gas giant available again, clan Kellum could create stardrive fuel as fast as they could sell it.

Yes, their fortunes had certainly turned, and Zhett tried to feel happy about it. “Are you going to miss the old shipyards, Dad? You put decades of work into them, your heart and soul—”

“By damn, of course not! They were an administrative pain, and profits were always dicey. Skymining makes me much happier. It’s back to our traditional place.”

She chuckled. “Remember when we were hiding in the rings, watching the Eddies and the drogues fight over Osquivel? You swore you would never go back to skymining again.”

“Big mistake—saying never, I mean.”

Golden sunlight brightened across the clouds. A spidery cargo escort lifted up and away, its metal legs holding ekti canisters. A flush of anger heated Zhett’s skin as she remembered how Patrick Fitzpatrick had tricked her and stolen a similar cargo escort.

Her father didn’t notice her mood shift. “At least three other families are bringing skymines here.” He opened his arms to encompass the infinite skyscape. “But Golgen’s a big place. Plenty to go around.”

Kellum rested meaty elbows on the red rail. With a sideways glance, he scooped an arm around his daughter’s shoulders. “After the mess at Rendezvous, the scattered clans are drawing together. Have I told you the plans for a new commercial hub at Yreka? All very hush-hush, not much more than a black-market network with the orphaned Hansa colonies—but it’s a start. We’ll be thumbing our noses at the Big Goose and trading only with the people we like. The Eddy bastards can eat nonrecyclable waste for all I care.”

“Yes, Dad,” Zhett said, deciding to think no more of Fitzpatrick. “That’s exactly what the Eddy bastards can do.”

61

JESS TAMBLYN

L
eaving stormy Charybdis on their mission to Plumas, Jess and Cesca were finally alone. The enclosed water was warm, a buoyant embrace so the two could drift in each other’s arms.

At first, Jess was lost in the wonder of the simple physical contact, the solid feel of another human body, the clasp of a hand, the touch of a shoulder—how he had missed it! But the joy was oh so much more intense because it was Cesca.
Cesca
.

Drifting together and more than merely alive, their bodies remembered each other. Skin renewed contact with skin. A tingle suffused Jess’s bones, his muscles, his eyes. For years he had imagined a moment when the two of them could touch again. And now that the dreamed-of time was actually here, it was somehow more brilliant, more
real,
than any touch he had experienced in his life.

When they had finished making love after such a lonely age, Jess felt completely happy and content. For the first time, he truly knew how it felt to be one with someone. With Cesca. He let the sensation encircle him like her arms around his waist.

Always permeating his mind and hers, the elemental creatures drank in every detail of the experience. A voice rang in both of their heads.
Now we understand. Always before, your words and desires had insufficient meaning to us. We are grateful for the enlightenment you shared
.

Jess grinned. “It was our pleasure.” He realized now that their every kiss, every mingled droplet of moisture, every shared sparkle of perspiration also joined them closer together, thanks to the water elementals. The wentals had bound them more tightly than he or Cesca could ever have done.

She was embarrassed. “We had an audience?”

“I prefer to consider the wentals allies and companions, rather than voyeurs. Remember how we’ve changed. They’re part of
us
now.”

“That’ll take some getting used to.” She drifted closer to him. “But I can accept the circumstances—especially in exchange for
this . . .”

At last, he no longer felt a sense of betrayal toward Ross. If his brother hadn’t been killed by the hydrogues, Jess knew he would have stayed on the honorable path. His love for Cesca would have remained unrequited. But the Guiding Star shone steadily now.

When they reached the ice moon, Cesca stared through the curved bubble. The shimmering alien vessel came to rest on the frozen surface, lit with splintered reflections. Below, on the cracked plains of ice, they could make out the silent facilities, the standing wellheads—and fourteen large water tankers.

“There they are,” Jess said. Once filled with wental water, those tankers would become incredible weapons against the drogues. They would find Roamer volunteers to fly them to infested gas giants and release their cargoes into the high clouds. The wentals would recapture one gas giant after another.

He knew his uncles would be glad to see him again, anxious to help with this new challenge. After retrieving his mother’s frozen body from the crevasse, Jess had just left her in the grotto and raced off to rescue Cesca. Now maybe he could give her a proper Roamer funeral. Mourning was a way of life for the clans. The last time Cesca had been to Plumas was when his father had died, and before that, Ross. . . .

Jess took her by the hand and drew her through the vessel’s permeable hull. She stood next to him on the rugged ice, exposed to open vacuum and completely unharmed. The Speaker for the Roamer clans looked like a surprised little girl, filled with a sense of wonder.

But Jess could sense unusual vibrations with his bare feet, disruptions so severe they penetrated the thick crust. The wentals seemed to knot within him.
There is danger. The waters here are angry. Something separate from us . . . Once again, the wentals were being mysterious. Jess was anxious to get to the water-mine settlement beneath the ice.

Uneasy, he led Cesca across the rippled terrain to the nearest lift shaft. The airlock had been forced open from the inside, and the ice outside the door was splattered with an iron-hard film, as if someone had dumped out buckets of red paint. Scraps of translucent tissue, like burst and discarded polymer bags, lay frozen on the ground.

The airlock controls showed that the lift shaft had automatically sealed itself when exposed to the vacuum. He would have to find another way inside. “Come with me.”

Calling up wental energy, he showed her how to shift aside the molecules of frozen water and drop through the ice as if they had a parachute. It should have been a time of wonder for Cesca as she accompanied him, but her alarm grew as she too felt the violent vibrations from below.

When the two of them descended into the grotto, they encountered a scene of appalling chaos. Crashing sounds and hissing steam filled the chamber. Geysers erupted from split well pipes. Torrents of meltwater and shattered chunks of ice tumbled as an irresistible force repeatedly slammed the ceiling.

The light here was far dimmer than he remembered. Jess saw empty craters where two of the artificial suns had once been. Roamer workers ran about, screaming and shouting as they dove for shelter. More than a dozen bodies lay on the ground, many of them encased in cocoons of ice, others simply dead where they had fallen. Cesca pointed to elongated flashes of scarlet, a pack of wormlike creatures that slithered along the ice in pursuit of a fleeing man.

Another explosion slammed into the roof like a tantrum-throwing child pounding on a door. Jess and Cesca spun to the sound. The mists briefly cleared, and he saw the unmistakable form at the heart of the rampage.

When he’d brought her body back out of the crevasse, Karla Tamblyn had been encased in ice. Seeing her alive again but impossibly altered, he experienced a flood of memories, the painful farewell conversations with her, his mother’s words gradually slurring as the cold stole her away.

Now his mother had become fury incarnate. Jess saw in her face and in the almost tangible aura around her the same terrible and uncontrolled lust for destruction that the wentals had shown him in the memory images of the Ildiran septar and the Klikiss breedex, both of whom had succumbed to tainted wentals. He felt the living water entities tug inside him, a sense of revulsion. His heart sank like a stone, and Jess knew exactly what had happened to his mother . . . though he didn’t know how.

Karla’s skin was white, as if her face and arms were carved out of milky ice, but corrupted lightning lived behind her eyes.
Tainted
. When she saw him, her ivory face was blank and implacable. Then her expression registered clear recognition.

With power crackling all around her, Karla’s inhuman voice boomed out, without even a hint of warmth. “Welcome home, Jess.”

62

NIRA

I
t was an unsettling thing for Nira to look upon her own grave. Udru’h had announced her “death,” and everyone had believed him. No Ildiran would doubt the word of a Designate, and the humans had not thought to question it.

The traditional marker was a geometrically cut stone with a tiny solar power source that generated a hologram of her face. Nira looked at the blurry image of her taken from the breeding records. She had started to look old and battered from the moment she was brought to Dobro.

With Osira’h silent beside her, Nira knelt on the hillside, feeling the dry grasses prickle her bare green knees. She touched her fingers to the ground as if searching for her own lost life beneath the soil.

“I first met my father on this hillside,” the girl said solemnly. “The Mage-Imperator came to see your grave marker—I think that is why Designate Udru’h bothered to erect it in the first place. Most humans don’t receive anything so elaborate.”

Nira’s throat was dry as she tried to imagine the scene and what Jora’h must have been thinking. “You saw him here?”

The girl’s expression remained strangely distant. “Even though you gave me all your memories, I still could not talk to him. I could not be sure which side he was on. I knew what had happened to you, what he had allowed to happen.”

Nira glanced sharply at her daughter. Jora’h had been here, so close, but he too had believed Udru’h’s lie about her death. “He knew nothing about it! He couldn’t have. You of all people know how much your father loved me.”

The girl’s stare was unwavering and unusually harsh. “I know how much you loved
him
. But, as you have seen with Designate Udru’h, Ildirans are masters of deception.”

Nira averted her eyes. “Jora’h loved me. I’m certain he still does. I’ll know it as soon as I see him.” If Designate Udru’h did not arrange for an “accident” before she could return to Jora’h. What did Udru’h have to gain by letting her free now? She would have to be extremely cautious.

She looked at Osira’h, feeling new guilt for dumping all of her terrible memories and hateful experiences into such a fresh and impressionable mind.

“Why are you looking at me that way, Mother?”

Nira forced a bittersweet smile. “I see only a little girl, but when you talk, I am amazed by your words. You’re extremely wise for a child.”

“I have never been just a child. It wasn’t allowed.” Nira felt an immense sadness, even though the girl smiled warmly. “But I did have a
childhood,
Mother. I had yours. I remember living with your mother and father, your brothers and sisters in a crowded dwelling. You were the only one in your family who was interested in stories. I remember us climbing to the high canopy for the first time, right after you were accepted as a green priest acolyte. Ah, the view! The fronds were like an ocean, extending as far as we could see! A big emerald condorfly buzzed right past.”

Nira was lost in the recollection herself. “I was so startled I fell back, almost dropped off the branches—”

“But a green priest was there to catch us. Beneto, wasn’t it?”

“And we just stared for hours, smelling the winds, watching the flying insects, listening to all the acolytes reading aloud.” Looking into her daughter’s eyes, she saw that Osira’h really did remember every detail.
So, I offered her a few pleasant memories, too . . .

“I can’t imagine being without the gift you gave me.” Osira’h turned quickly to grin at a group of small figures approaching. “Here come my brothers and sisters. They wanted to meet you.”

Intent on the sham of her grave, Nira now flinched as she saw the small half-breed forms coming toward her. Each of those children, sprung from weeks of abuse in the breeding barracks, was an experiment, conceived not out of love but to meet a genetic design. Her hand clenched.

Osira’h remained placid, though she sensed her mother’s fear and reluctance. “I know very well what you think of their fathers. I have your memories of how they were conceived, born, and taken from you.” She reached out to squeeze Nira’s green hand. “For you, their origin was a curse. You endured it. But that is in the past, and they had no part in it. They are not your enemies. They are your
children, Mother. Like me. Let me introduce you to them.” Taking her hand, she led Nira to meet the four children halfway. With weak knees, Nira looked at the young faces, forcing herself to truly
see
them.

“This is Rod’h, the oldest of your sons.” The boy smiled at her. His eyes glittered with a star-shaped reflection. Rod’h had a hard face, with the handsome features of Jora’h’s line. She could see immediately that he was the son of Udru’h.

Nira’s heart pounded, but she steeled herself. She tentatively extended her hand. “This is how humans greet each other.” Rod’h clasped her hand, and his grip was surprisingly strong.

“You are my mother? I never thought I would meet my mother.”

Nira tried to see beyond her own suspicions. Despite his paternal heritage, this boy was still
her son
. No matter how much hatred she held toward Udru’h, Rod’h was half her child, as well.

“And this is Gale’nh.”

Nira turned to the younger of the boys, recognized his strong and proud features. “I . . . remember Adar Kori’nh.”

The boy seemed pleased. “My father was a hero. And you too, Mother. We were taught how we might save the Empire.”

Nira swallowed hard. “That is what some Ildirans believed.”

The two other daughters, youngest of the five children, were Tamo’l and Muree’n. Though the youngest, Muree’n was already larger than her two closest siblings, showing her heritage from the guard kith. They all crowded forward, anxious to be close to their mother. When Nira felt their tentative curiosity, their unbelievable innocence, she realized that she did not hate them, could not hold their own births against them.

“I’ve told them the truth, Mother. We will help you change this place.”

“I am glad to know you all. And you too, Osira’h.” Nira touched her daughter on the cheek as tears welled in her eyes. “For showing me what was right, even though I was afraid of it.”