Metal Swarm Page 6

  She remembered her own upbringing on Theroc, crowded with parents and brothers and sisters in a fungus-reef dwelling. Nira had been so disconnected and dazed since her rescue that she hadn’t learned until recently how her family had been killed in the first hydrogue attack. Now the loss felt acute, yet at the same time not real. Nira regretted how distant she had been from them, and it made her more determined to pull the pieces of her own family together, to cement their connections.

  Nira smiled. “We can make up whatever rules and traditions we like.” She pulled Osira’h to her feet. “Let’s go see your brothers and sisters.”

  Nira found the other half-breed children in Mijistra’s primary star observatory. Under constant daylight, Ildiran astronomers did not use telescopes; until their race had ventured into space, no Ildiran had ever even seen a dark night sky. In the windowless room, rectangular sheets of crystal displayed images from satellites and space-based observatories. Each screen offered a stunning view, like a wide, tilted window leading out into the universe. Nira felt dizzy, as if she might fall headfirst into a star.

  Filters diluted the images so an audience could look directly at the roiling plasma surface. Six projection screens showed blazing suns of various colors and spectral types; one of the famed seven suns, however, was dead.

  With all five of her children, Nira gazed at the reminder of the star that the hydrogues and faeros had killed. The two boys, Rod’h and Gale’nh, seemed angry and defiant, while the two youngest girls were more interested in the fiery living suns, too young to understand the tragedy in the quenching of Durris-B.

  Nira touched Rod’h’s shoulder. At first it had been hard for her to put aside her anger and resentment toward Osira’h’s siblings, since they were the products of repeated rapes on Dobro for the purpose of impregnating her. But in time, Nira had accepted that, regardless of who their fathers were, these were her children, too. They weren’t responsible for how they had been conceived. Her sons and daughters were exceptional, unique, and irreplaceable, and she loved each of them.

  The image of the dead star Durris-B reminded Nira of a scar in space. Scars . . . They all had scars. Jora’h was attempting to heal his Empire and Nira’s heart, and she would tend to her family. Soon they would all be whole again.

  11 SULLIVAN GOLD

  In his quarters halfway up a crystalline tower, Sullivan looked at reflections of Mijistra’s skyline and pondered what to write. The gray-haired cloud-harvester manager held a stylus in his hand, tapping the tip against a diamondfilm sheet. He had gone through seven drafts of this letter to his wife. No words seemed sufficient to explain everything that had happened.

  “Dear Lydia: Guess what? I’m not dead after all!” His lips quirked in a smile. He could just imagine her expression when she read that.

  Instead, he started again and wrote a long rambling letter, telling Lydia how often he had thought about her and what dangerous situations he had survived. “My cloud harvester was destroyed by hydrogues. I rescued an Ildiran crew and then was held prisoner in Mijistra.” He reassured Lydia that he was healthy, treated well, and bore no particular ill will toward the Ildirans.

  As he continued writing, he worried about what had happened to his family. Had any of them been hurt during the hydrogue battle around Earth? Were Lydia, their children, and their grandchildren even still alive? Sullivan had no idea what was going on. “Now the Mage-Imperator has decided to let me come back home again, if you’ll have me.”

  After writing two more drafts of the letter, he decided it was as good as he could make it. He reminded himself it was a message home, not a literary masterpiece (though Lydia would certainly correct his grammar). “Hope to see you soon. Love, Sullivan.”

  He gathered up the sheets and went in search of Kolker, wanting to find the lonely green priest before all the other Hansa engineers scribbled their own letters home. Kolker would dictate the words into the treeling like a telegraph operator sending a message. Some other green priest would receive the letter and find someone to deliver it to Lydia. How he wished he could be there to see her reaction! (Then again, if he could be there, the message itself would be superfluous.)

  In one of the Prism Palace’s courtyard gardens Kolker sat cross-legged and alone on a polished stone slab under the intense light from multiple suns. Even with one of Ildira’s seven stars snuffed out, the day was too bright for Sullivan, though he had gotten used to squinting. In his open palms Kolker held a mirrorlike prismatic medallion, a circle with patterns etched on its angled faces, so that when the sunlight struck it, rainbows splashed off in colored streams.

  The green priest seemed preoccupied when Sullivan greeted him and asked him to send the letter to Lydia on Earth. “I’ll try, of course, but I don’t know if it’ll do much good. The only green priest on Earth is rarely allowed to use his treeling. He’s under house arrest in the Whisper Palace.”

  “Why would the Chairman want to isolate his green priest?”

  “Because of the government breakdown.”

  Sullivan sat beside Kolker on the stone slab, trying to get comfortable. “What government breakdown? Sounds like you have some news you haven’t shared.”

  Not reluctantly, but without any obvious interest in the matter, Kolker explained what had happened with King Peter and the new Confederation, and that all green priests had denied their communication services to the Hansa.

  “What a mess! As if the drogues weren’t bad enough. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It didn’t seem important right now.”

  Sullivan could tell that the green priest was troubled, changed somehow. Once, he’d been extremely talkative, spending much of his time connected through the worldforest network. “I’m surprised you haven’t been up in the rooftop gardens all day long, using the treeling to chat with your green priest friends.”

  Kolker shrugged. “What used to give me so much joy isn’t enough anymore. It’s as if blinders have been removed from my eyes. Where once I saw only a small meal, now I can envision an entire banquet, yet I’m not allowed to taste anything other than the same portions I had before.” He tilted the medallion, and bright light flashed at Sullivan, making him shield his eyes. “Did I tell you about the funeral for Tery’l?”

  “That old lens kithman who talked to you about the Lightsource? No. I didn’t realize he was such a close friend of yours.”

  Kolker continued in a wistful voice. “Tery’l was laid out on a platform of impervious stone inside something called a blazarium. Handler kithmen swung focusing mirrors into place and tilted the crematory lenses. In only a second, the focused light of all the suns consumed him. It was beautiful and bright, just like a green priest being absorbed into the forest. I knew for certain my friend had become a part of the Lightsource. It’s a whole racial tapestry that humans can’t see. Ildirans are so much closer than we are, so united . . . while humans are separate, like billions of islands in a cosmic archipelago.”

  Kolker stared down into the flashing medallion. “Tery’l taught me that telink isn’t as all-encompassing as I’d imagined. Only green priests can tap into the verdani mind, but thism encompasses the entire Ildiran race. I want to be a part of that.”

  Sullivan said, “A human can’t just become an alien by working hard at it, any more than a horse can become an eagle.”

  “Nevertheless, I intend to study with other lens kithmen until I know the truth. The Mage-Imperator has given us permission to leave here, but I am staying on Ildira.”

  12 TASIA TAMBLYN

  No shower had ever felt so marvelous, no meal tasted so delicious, no clean set of clothes felt so wonderful against Tasia’s skin. She was alive, and with Robb, and far from the purgatory where the drogues had held them.

  Robb’s father had taken aboard the prisoners rescued from the gas giant by a wental-charged Jess and flown away with them in his EDF transport. After delivering the haggard group to the nearest Hansa outpost for medical attention, Conrad Brindle insisted
that his son go home with him. And Tasia refused to be separated from her friend and lover.

  She and Robb luxuriated, taking turns in the ship’s cramped hygiene facilities. Even when Robb was cleaned up and dressed in a fresh uniform, he still looked like a wild man with his hair and wiry beard sticking out in every direction, untrimmed and ungroomed during years of captivity.

  Having grown accustomed to EDF-regulation length, Tasia felt that her own hair was long and unruly as well. And so they cut each other’s hair. At first it was just a task; then it became play. Next she shaved Robb’s beard, unearthing the young and eager face she had fallen in love with.

  When they went to the cockpit to show Conrad their handiwork, he took a long time to break into a smile. “I’ll put a recommendation in your EDF files that neither of you ever be reassigned as a barber.”

  “This is the most presentable I’ve looked in three years!” Robb said.

  “The sad thing is, I believe you.”

  Now, headed back to the Hansa to present themselves to their superior officers, Robb was as eager to find answers as he was to make his report to the EDF. Tasia felt out of touch, too, and wanted mainly to know what had happened with her family. She’d had very little contact with the clans since joining the EDF. After what they’d done to Roamers—and to her—she was no longer enamored with the Earth Defense Forces.

  When Tasia called up nav diagrams and projected the spray of nearby stars, she saw that their course took them near the frozen moon of Plumas. “Those are my family’s water mines. It’s right on the way. You can drop me off.”

  “Your duty is to the EDF, Captain Tamblyn,” Conrad Brindle said. “Our priority is to report to Earth, or at least the nearest official outpost.”

  “I’ve been gone from the EDF for so long, I don’t know who to report to anymore,” Robb said.

  “Neither of us does,” Tasia said. “We’re talking about my family here.” She cocked her head and looked at Robb’s father as if he were a new recruit. “My uniform may be a little tattered, but I still outrank you, Lieutenant Commander—if you want to split hairs.”

  Conrad looked briefly incensed, but Robb intervened to soothe any ruffled feathers. “What’ll it hurt if we stop there, Dad? A few hours? A day? The drogues are defeated, and we deserve a little R & R.”

  Conrad didn’t seem to know how to place these two in a hierarchical list in his mind. They were younger and a far cry from the traditional EDF norms of disciplined behavior, but he finally conceded to Tasia. “I admit you did a good thing for my wife and me when you came to see us after we thought Robb was dead, Captain Tamblyn. And your brother Jess . . . changed a lot of things for me. He was very clear about what he thought of the EDF operations against the Roamers. And he may well have been right. We’ll go on a short side trip.”

  In joining the EDF, Tasia had essentially cut herself off from her family. She hadn’t been home for many years—hadn’t been there to see her father on his deathbed, hadn’t helped Jess try to run the place. Now she felt eager, as well as a bit intimidated. Home. Sometimes that concept was a difficult one for Roamers.

  A day later, though, when the transport arrived at Plumas, she began to get a bad feeling. Conrad circled the ice moon, scanning the frozen surface for telltale signs of industry and settlement.

  Tasia peered at high-res images of the wreckage of one of the cargo lifts, the sealed-off wellheads, where spacecraft came to fill up with water. Though there should have been a bustle of traffic, only two small vessels were docked. She saw only three of the giant water tankers that had been the pride of clan Tamblyn. “Shizz, this place has really fallen apart.”

  After landing and suiting up, they trudged across rough ice that was tracked with treadmarks from heavy machinery and reached the water-pumping facilities. Robb followed Tasia, excited to see the place she had told him about; his father was reserved, speaking little through the suit comm system.

  Tasia had to check three different lift shafts before she discovered a functional passage through the kilometer-thick ice. Although she didn’t voice any worry, she found herself growing very uneasy. Deep below, when the lift doors creaked open and the air seals indicated breathable atmosphere, Tasia flipped open her faceplate. She took a breath of the frigid air, but it had lost its familiarity. She smelled chemicals, grease, soot, ozone, and an undertone of rancid meat. “What the hell happened here?”

  It seemed as if a tornado had struck the underground grotto. A pair of dark sockets marked where two of the artificial suns implanted in the frozen ceiling had fallen out. The shadowy vault reflected weak light from the remaining artificial sun. Jagged chunks of the crust had broken off and fallen into the cold subterranean sea, leaving ominous black fissures.

  “It’s your place, Tamblyn. You tell me.” Robb looked around. A large generator was running, providing power for temporary lights strung to insulated buildings. “Hello? Anybody home?”

  Startled voices came from one of the huts, and three men scrambled out. Tasia recognized her uncles Caleb, Torin, and Wynn. The goofy expressions on their faces made her burst out laughing. “You are one sorry trio of defenders!”

  Caleb gaped. “Tasia! Sweet girl, where have you been?”

  Awkwardly in her environment suit, she hugged them, moving from one to another. She set her helmet down on the ice pack. “The mines were in a lot better shape when I left. I should fire your asses. This is still my family’s business.”

  “Our family’s,” Torin said. “We’re all clan Tamblyn.”

  Conrad said, “So is anyone going to tell us what happened here?”

  Tasia’s uncles looked suspiciously at the EDF uniforms, so she took Caleb’s bony arm. “You’d better invite us inside one of those warm huts, show us decent Roamer hospitality—or at least some prepackaged meals—and tell me everything I need to know.”

  Inside the hut, after they had all made their introductions, the three men told their visitors how a tainted wental had possessed the frozen body of Karla Tamblyn, killed their brother Andrew, and nearly destroyed the water mines, until Jess and Cesca had saved them. Tasia was speechless, trying to absorb the unbelievable story. Her mother? The woman had been frozen in a crevasse when Tasia was a young girl. However, having seen Jess rescue her fellow prisoners from the drogues, she didn’t doubt the story. She had missed so much! Robb sensed her unease and rubbed her shoulders. She touched his hand appreciatively.

  Conrad was interested in practical business. “Do you have news about the Hansa? What has happened since the hydrogues were defeated? We’ve heard some stories—”

  “A lot of conflicting stories,” Robb cut in.

  Wynn leaned back in his chair, frowning. “By the Guiding Star, nobody knows exactly what happened. I hear the drogues are not going to be a problem anymore, and we can start skymining in earnest again. That means the clans will need Plumas water shipments like never before—and this place is a wreck!”

  “Skymining, sure, but who knows what’ll become of the Roamers now with the big government shake-up?” Caleb added. “I’ll stay here and clean house until it all gets sorted out.”

  “What government shake-up?” Tasia said.

  Conrad turned quickly to his son. “We need to get back to Earth.”

  “Oh, not to Earth,” Torin said. “Theroc’s the center of government now, a new Confederation. King Peter and Queen Estarra moved the capital there so Roamer clans, Hansa colonies, and Therons could all form a unified government.”

  “About time we did something right,” Wynn added.

  “But what about General Lanyan? Chairman Wenceslas?” Conrad asked.

  “Nobody’s heard much from Earth recently,” Torin said. “It’s been marginalized since all authority moved to Theroc.”

  “Meanwhile, we’re just here sorting out the pieces. It’s only the three of us patching things up until we can afford to bring work crews back.” Caleb raised his eyebrows. “But if you’d like to stick around, we ca
n find a whole lot of work for you to do—major construction, reinstalling our pumps, repairing our lift shafts. Think of the job security.”

  Tasia was sorely tempted, and Robb seemed willing to stay as well, but Conrad stiffened. “We are still members of the Earth Defense Forces. All three of us. We need to deliver our report and receive new orders.”

  Tasia nodded apologetically to her uncles. “He’s right.” She didn’t give Robb’s father the opportunity to challenge her. “We’d better head for Theroc to brief King Peter. Go straight to the top, that’s what I say.”

  13 PATRICK FITZPATRICK III

  The Gypsy wandered among the stars, while its pilot chased any clue he could find. Since the “borrowed” space yacht’s fuel tanks were running low on ekti, Patrick Fitzpatrick hoped he would find Zhett soon.

  He needed to see her, needed to apologize and prove he wasn’t the cretin she must think him. That was certainly going to be a challenge! He had tricked her so that he and his comrades could escape, and in doing so he had exposed the clan Kellum shipyards, nearly causing their destruction. Zhett wasn’t going to brush something like that aside. And she didn’t even know the half of it. There were plenty of other things she could blame him for.

  Patrick had already been to the most obvious spots—the ruins of Rendezvous, the empty Kellum shipyards at Osquivel, the gas giant Golgen—and now, based on a vague tip, he closed in on a stormy planet called Constantine III. The greenish-gray world did not look promising, certainly no place that a member of the wealthy Fitzpatrick family would choose to visit. The unpleasant environment wouldn’t deter Roamers, however. They seemed to thrive on hardship.

  Fed up with the EDF after watching the Hansa use Roamers as scapegoats, Patrick had taken a ship that belonged to his grandmother. Technically, he might be considered a deserter, but Patrick didn’t see it that way. His duty to the EDF had been fulfilled, and he would not serve the corrupt Hansa again, a government that lied and trampled rights to get what it wanted, protected itself at the expense of its people, and diverted blame onto the innocent. Patrick owed a debt to the Roamers, and he was honor bound to meet that obligation. So he’d gone off to track down Del Kellum’s dark-haired daughter. The problem was that neither she nor any of the Roamers wanted to be found.