The Dark Between the Stars Read online

  After the Elemental War, he’d spent years with his mother Margaret, the famous xeno-archaeologist, recording the chronicle of the Klikiss race—The Song of the Breedex. He and his mother had scrambled to preserve the remarkable story before the insect race vanished forever, leaving only the husks of discarded bodies in the bizarre ruins of their cities.

  After Margaret died and her remains were buried on Eljiid, a Klikiss world where she had been studying, Anton had returned to Earth. He took a position at the university, received accolades, was named an assistant dean, and—best of all—had a light course load. He taught only one advanced class per semester, which allowed him to write a biography of his illustrious parents. . . .

  But Ildira always called to him. After Mijistra was rebuilt following the war, the Mage-Imperator once again extended an invitation to him, and Anton jumped at the chance. He came back to a guest office in the Hall of Rememberers and had been here for the past six years.

  When Anton and Dyvo’sh reached the construction site of the old sculpture museum, Anton watched the worker kith, artists, and sculptors who were restoring the exhibits. This restoration had the dual purpose of preserving history for Ildirans and edifying the human settlers—a handful of “Ildirophiles” who had formed their own small enclave in the capital city, where the expatriates ran traditional stores, cafés, and craft workshops.

  The museum workers recognized Rememberer Anton Colicos, who was one of the most well-known humans on Ildira, even more familiar to them than the Confederation’s King Peter. Considering the uproar he so often caused, Anton sometimes wondered if the mere sight of him struck terror into their hearts. After all, his discoveries often resulted in changes and disruptions.

  Anton greeted them with good cheer and asked directions to the newly uncovered document crypt. When the reticent workers talked among themselves, Dyvo’sh stepped forward. “Rememberer Anton asked a question! You know he has the blessing of the Mage-Imperator himself.”

  One of the museum administrators directed the two visitors to a debris-strewn staircase that led to underground levels. Anton called for three squat muscular workers to accompany them. “And please bring your battering clubs and those Ildiran pickax things. We need to break open the vault.”

  Anton saw the consternation he was causing. Ildirans had so much difficulty accepting anything they hadn’t done before.

  In the underground chamber lit by ceiling-mounted blazers, he and Dyvo’sh stood before the repository that had been walled up in ancient times by a barely remembered Mage-Imperator; over the years, other structures were built on top of it. Once “history” was set in stone and a Mage-Imperator’s reign was permanently recorded in the Saga, all else was considered superfluous. Anton supposed the Mage-Imperators might feel a kind of rivalry that let them bury the extravagance of their predecessors in order to showcase their own reigns, only to have the same thing done to them by their successors.

  But scrap heaps sometimes held the most interesting items for a historian.

  The museum workers hesitated when they looked at the seal. “Well, go on,” Anton said, “break it open. I’d like to study the documents in there.”

  Guard kithmen hurried down the stairs in a clatter of weapons, accompanied by two bustling rememberers. “Halt! We forbid you to break that seal. You cannot defy the clear commands of a Mage-Imperator.”

  Dyvo’sh looked frightened, but Anton just groaned. “If you prevent me from seeing the documents, then you are also defying the commands of a Mage-Imperator. I’d say the current Mage-Imperator’s orders supersede the orders of one who returned to the Lightsource centuries ago.”

  The guard kithmen took up positions in front of the crypt door, blocking the workers and their battering tools. A museum administrator hurried down from the upper levels. “This vault contains discarded records not considered fit for inclusion in the Saga. It holds nothing of interest.”

  Anton was frustrated. “Then you don’t have to look at it, but I’m interested.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “I can send word to the Prism Palace right now, if you insist on ignoring the orders of the Mage-Imperator.”

  With another commotion on the stairs, a lean pantherlike warrior woman bounded into the vault chamber. Her movements flowed like liquid, and she was accompanied by another scrappy girl who seemed cut from the same pattern. “You appear to need my help once again, friend Anton,” Yazra’h said.

  Anton let out a sigh of relief upon seeing the Mage-Imperator’s warrior daughter. Yazra’h gave him a flirtatious, hungry smile, the kind that always made him uncomfortable. He said, “Not quite so dramatic a rescue as you’ve provided in the past, but I’d appreciate your advice on how to handle this situation.”

  Yazra’h’s mane of coppery gold hair flowed in all directions, and her bright eyes gleamed at the prospect of a fight. She wore thin, tough armor with intimidating spines on her shoulders, but her legs were bare. The girl beside her was similarly dressed, and Yazra’h nodded to her. “This time Muree’n can help me explain our point of view.”

  The two faced the guard kith who blocked the document crypt, standing firm but uneasy. Yazra’h snapped, “Well? I am the Mage-Imperator’s daughter. I command you to do as Rememberer Anton says. I will vouch for him.”

  One of the nervous rememberers stood to one side. “The seal on the vault forbids it. That is the word of a Mage-Imperator.”

  She removed a battle stick from her waist, flicked it open into a nonlethal fighting pole. Her companion did the same. Muree’n was one of Nira’s halfbreed children, and Anton saw echoes of the green priest in her face. The girl’s muscles were tense like tightly wound springs. They waited for a long moment, facing off in silence.

  Yazra’h did not flinch. “These records are vital to Rememberer Anton’s work. You will obey the command.”

  Anton swallowed hard. “Maybe there’s no need to—”

  “They will not change their minds,” Muree’n blurted out. “Let us have some practice.”

  She leaped forward without warning, twirling her battle stick and smashing it toward the nearest guard’s face. He brought up a gauntleted hand, so that her blow broke his wrist instead of his nose. He yelped.

  Yazra’h sprang into action, trying to keep up with her protégée. The two women fought like dust devils. The battle sticks were a blur, and the expression on Yazra’h’s face was intense but also joyous. She loved the fight.

  Years ago, Yazra’h had taken Anton under her wing. She flirted with him, toyed with him, made it plain that she wanted to take him as a lover, though he did nothing whatsoever to encourage her. He simply wasn’t interested. Yazra’h respected him, and also protected him when he got into difficult situations.

  She had no lack of energetic lovers—mostly soldier kithmen, but other Ildirans as well. Yazra’h had finally admitted to Anton that she understood he was a delicate sort and must be concerned, with good reason, that she might break him if she got carried away.

  Now, as they fought down the guard kithmen, Muree’n seemed even wilder and more reckless than Yazra’h. The hapless guards fought back, but were reluctant to harm a daughter of the Mage-Imperator—or maybe that was what they told themselves as they lay broken, bruised, and groaning on the floor.

  Yazra’h retracted her battle stick, while Muree’n remained alert, as if hoping one of her opponents would climb to his feet and fight another round.

  Dyvo’sh stared at the mayhem, wide-eyed. Yazra’h tossed her wild hair, and Anton made a point of thanking her. “Research isn’t normally so combative,” he said. “Let’s just hope there’s something important enough in there to make all this trouble worthwhile. I’d rather it wasn’t a pile of old agricultural inventory lists.”

  Yazra’h made an impatient gesture to the worker kithmen, who stood holding their heavy tools. “Go on, there is no need for further delay. Rememberer Anton wishes the crypt opened—so open it.”

  More afraid of Yazra’h than of some anci
ent warning, the workers lifted their clubs and pickaxes and smashed open the seal.

  SIX

  GARRISON REEVES

  In uncharted, empty space, the ship floated among the mysterious globules. Two days of unthreatening quiet gave Garrison and Seth freedom to just relax. They played games, and Garrison told him about Roamer history and other planets they would someday see. It was the sort of family life he’d hoped to have with Elisa.

  They had plenty of fuel and supplies, but he knew he and Seth couldn’t stay here forever. He had to decide where to go next and what new life they would make. Although the knot in his stomach didn’t go away, it loosened a little.

  The strange bloaters drifted around them, occasionally sparkling, moving onward in a big cluster like slumbering space jellyfish.

  With no communication from the outside, Garrison had no way of knowing what might be happening at Sheol. He would prefer to be wrong about his fears for the lava-processing operations. And if nothing happened, Elisa would use that to prove his paranoid irresponsibility and claim that he had willfully stolen her son. Garrison knew his wife could be vindictive if she wanted to be. And after what he had done, she would definitely want to be.

  During their downtime, Seth studied different types of compies in the ship’s databases, following his fascination with the different models. He could rattle off the capabilities of Friendly compies, Listener compies, Teacher compies, Domestic compies, Worker compies, and numerous subcategories. He even knew the specs of the outlawed Soldier compies, which had caused such disastrous mayhem during the Elemental War. Thanks to those fears, many people had stopped using compies.

  Seth, however, could talk on and on about the specialized programming and how new fail-safes had been implemented so there was no longer anything to worry about. Despite these facts, Seth had little interaction with compies. His mother refused to let him have one, and Lee Iswander used only a few of them at his Sheol operations.

  As they drifted along, Seth called up the research from well-known compy scientists Orli Covitz and her husband Matthew Freling. Over the years, the couple had championed the cause of compies, helping to rehabilitate them, trying to prove that fears and hesitations were no longer valid. They took in and rehabilitated compies abandoned by their owners.

  Seth nudged his father to sit next to him when he played video reports Orli Covitz had recorded. He particularly liked an entertaining set of educational loops that Orli and her compy DD produced. Although DD was a Friendly rather than a Teacher model, he served as a proper and unintentionally amusing foil when Orli explained ways that compies were helpful and loyal. Seth found DD charming, and had mentioned several times that he wanted a compy of his own just like DD.

  On the educational loop, Garrison watched the attractive woman in her midthirties, surrounded by compies like a naturalist surrounded by her favorite animals, clearly loving them. Orli had an easy smile and conveyed a childlike sense of wonder as she showed off her compies. She seemed so earnest, both delighted and dedicated. Her sweetness captured Garrison’s attention because she was such a striking contrast to Elisa. . . .

  Seth went to the cockpit to do a regular systems check, as Garrison had shown him. Garrison, meanwhile, remained alert, observing the odd nodules as they shifted around. The things were beautiful and exotic, possibly organic, possibly some bizarre natural phenomenon.

  His father would have given them a cursory glance and then gone back to work. Olaf Reeves had very little patience for distractions or any opinions other than his own.

  Garrison feared that his most viable alternative would be to return with Seth to the bustling safety of clan Reeves. His family would take the two of them in, but it would involve an apology from Garrison and lengthy rebukes from the stern clan leader. He would have to slide himself back under Olaf’s thumb and let Seth be raised in that oppressive, close-minded environment. The members of clan Reeves were mockingly referred to as “Retroamers” by the modern and open clans at the new government center of Newstation. Garrison didn’t accept his family’s scorn for “clans tainted by civilization.”

  No, he would find something else. He had enough skills and interests that he could apply for any number of useful jobs; his resourceful Roamer background guaranteed that at least. A good job was all he wanted, and the best environment for his son.

  Seth called from the cockpit. “There’s static on the screens, Dad—a sort of pulse every thirty seconds. You think it’s a signal from the bloaters? Maybe they’re trying to communicate with us.”

  Garrison came forward to look. On the screen, he saw a tiny blip, a flicker of static. Seth counted, and when he reached thirty, the blip appeared again. “See!”

  Garrison used a ship diagnostic sensor to pinpoint the origin. “It’s not coming from the bloaters. They’re all around us, but this signal is coming from our hull.” A chill ran down his spine—some kind of a tracer? “I’d better go outside and check it out.”

  “I’ll stay in here and monitor,” Seth said. He couldn’t resist adding, “You know, if you let me have a compy, he could be a copilot too. Orli Covitz would let us have one of the compies from her lab—maybe even DD.”

  “Right now, you’re my copilot,” Garrison said. “Keep watch.”

  He donned the flexible environment suit with easy familiarity. Roamers spent half their childhoods in a spacesuit. They knew how to fix things, tinker with all sorts of machinery, rig life support from the most unlikely assemblage of scraps. For a long time, that was the only way the outlaw clans could survive, because they got no help from anyone else. But they had proved themselves indispensable when they took over Ildiran skymining operations, harvesting the stardrive fuel ekti from gas-giant planets.

  His father insisted that Roamers were forgetting their heritage by being assimilated into the Confederation, but as Garrison fastened the fittings on his suit and went swiftly through the safety checks, he knew it was something he could never forget. It was part of him. Standing in the airlock, he clicked his helmet comm. “I’ll be back in a little while.”

  “I’ve got the ship, Dad.”

  Garrison cycled through and emerged into disorienting open space. He had worked outside at the damaged Rendezvous site for years, reconnecting support girders, stringing access tubes from one asteroid to another. Although Roamers were renowned for their innovation, clan Reeves workers insisted on rebuilding the old seat of government exactly according to the original plan. Olaf refused to consider improvements or modifications. “Rendezvous served us for centuries, and the clans did just fine,” his father said. “I wouldn’t presume that I know more than they did—and neither should you.”

  As Garrison moved away from the airlock hatch, he looked up and around him. The eerie bloaters were dimly lit by far-off starlight, as well as the glow from the running lights of the stolen Iswander ship. The swollen spheres hovered in silence, fascinating and unknowable.

  Seth’s voice appeared in his helmet. “Find anything? I’m watching the blips—every thirty seconds.”

  “Still looking.” He held on to hull protrusions and worked his way along the ship inch by inch. His hand scanner picked up signals, zeroing in on the pulse. It was coming from beneath the engines.

  Like cosmic soap bubbles, the bloaters shifted, rearranged their positions.

  He jetted down, maneuvered over to the exhaust cones. Now that he knew what to look for, he easily found a magnetic tracker, a standard cluster device that dropped out tiny signal buoys. Garrison knew how such things worked: no signal could travel while a ship moved faster than the speed of light, but each time they shut down the stardrive and reset course, this insidious tracking device would drop a marker with the appropriate information.

  Elisa must have put one on every Iswander ship.

  Garrison cursed her in silence, aware that Seth was listening on the helmet comm. Breathing heavily, he detached and deactivated the tracker—resisting the urge to smash it, since that would do no good. In
stead, he just let it drift away.

  High above, a glint of light distracted him, and several bloaters sparkled again. One nucleus flared with a bright flash. A moment later another one lit up in a different part of the cluster. Like a succession of firecrackers going off, two more flickered in some kind of pattern or signal, followed by three more sparking nearby.

  Then, a surge of light poured out of the nearest bloater. The flash washed over him and the entire ship, overloading his suit systems. His diagnostic screen went dark, as if the pulse of energy was too much for the sensors to handle. Static crackled through the helmet comm before he was left in deafening silence.

  He struggled to make his way back to the airlock. Because of the overload, his life support was failing. He had enough left to get inside, but without power assists from the suit’s servomotors, he found it much more difficult to move.

  With a crackle, the helmet comm came back on as a backup battery surrendered enough juice for him to hear a signal. “Dad, half our systems just shut down!”

  Garrison crawled along the ship’s hull, grabbing protrusions to pull himself to the airlock. He hoped the controls still functioned. “Coming back inside.” He hammered the activation panel, got only a faint blip in response, then nothing.

  Around him, the bloaters were quiescent again. Garrison could already feel deep cold settling in through his suit, though the insulation should have protected him for much longer.

  His breathing sounded loud in his helmet. With gloved hands he fumbled with the access plate beneath the useless controls and managed to trigger the manual override, forcing open the airlock. Garrison pulled himself inside, manually sealed the outer door, then used the chamber’s emergency canisters for an air dump that equalized the pressure.