Eternity's Mind

by Kevin J. Anderson

  “I can manage one of them,” Kristof said brightly, “if you’ll let me.”

  “We’ll consider it,” Patrick said, “but you need to work your way up.”

  Though Toff had never been a particularly good student, preferring hands-on work to studying, they had planned to send him to Academ, but as soon as this possibility arose, the young man had, with much pleading, convinced them to let him work directly in the operations. Patrick was skeptical, but Zhett knew the value of Roamer work, especially when founding a new business.

  “Once we’re up and running and making money,” she said sternly to Toff, “we’re going to get a Teacher compy. You will do daily lessons and you will score high enough that you don’t make me regret this decision.”

  “I will. I will!”

  More importantly, this would be a way for Marius Denva to get back to work and prove he could return his life, and their operations, to normal. Though shaken, Denva was mostly recovered from the black nightmare of being stranded inside the shell around Kuivahr. After the Ildirans returned him to Newstation, Zhett, Del, and Patrick were astonished to learn of his rescue. The entire distillery crew had been sure he had died in the shadow attack.

  “I just took a little longer to get away from Kuivahr than the rest of you did,” he said, trying to brush aside their concerns. “Next time, I promise I won’t lag behind. Once was enough.”

  He had surprised Zhett by signing up again to work with the Kellums. As a Roamer, Denva’s skills were adaptable to whatever industrial operations Del got into his head, and the survivor was treated with awe and respect by the rest of his crew. At his request, Zhett did everything she could to treat him the same as always.

  Since they had all worked with Denva before, Zhett was glad to have him supervising the new crew, which included most of the distillery workers who had escaped from Kuivahr.

  Zhett promised to give him a raise, as soon as they had any money.

  Now, with a broadband comm playing the background chatter, Zhett listened to the crew discussions and heard a new excitement in their voices. They were still terrified of the Shana Rei, with good reason, and they knew nothing was safe, but they were Roamers and eager to start harvesting ekti again. It seemed to be in their blood.

  “We rounded up fourteen viable units, Del,” Denva reported, already deep into the new job. “We might have to spend a week or two duct-taping systems, recharging power blocks, and making them all functional again, but we’ll get it done.”

  “Take days instead of weeks, by damn,” Del said. “We have plenty of exosuits and temporary life-support systems. Once we get the engines patched and running, we can do the interior decorating while we shepherd the equipment across space to the nearest bloater cluster.”

  “That’s the next question,” Zhett said. “We have to find one that hasn’t been claimed. Where do we set up our extraction operations?”

  As soon as the ekti rush began, scouts had scoured the Spiral Arm in search of the drifting nodules. Bloaters were not easy to detect in the dark spaces between the stars, but numerous clusters had been found and were already being harvested by clans that had been much swifter out of the gate. It seemed the clusters were more common than anyone had suspected. Zhett just needed to find one for clan Kellum.

  Not far away, visible through the main bridge windowport, Zhett watched a set of lights wink on as a primary ship was reactivated; some distance off, another set of lights came on as an abandoned tanker came online.

  “That’s two,” Denva transmitted. “Proof of concept. I’ve got crews aboard seven others, working and fiddling. I expect we’ll have more activated within the hour.”

  Toff cheered. Zhett chuckled. “Yes, this just might work. Our Guiding Star is shining bright again.”

  “It was always there,” Del said. “We just took a few too many detours.”

  “Then let’s be practical about this,” Patrick said. “We have to claim a bloater cluster before we can set up shop and start our operations. Zhett and I will go hunting.”

  “I want to go along, too,” Kristof said.

  “Maybe. But only if—” Zhett turned to her father. “Watch baby Rex? It’s a grandfather’s job.”

  Del adored the toddler. “I’ll raise him to be a Roamer. I might even have the boy managing a project by the time you come back.”

  “It shouldn’t be too long,” Zhett said. “I know where to start looking for our first bloaters.”

  CHAPTER

  43

  GENERAL NALANI KEAH

  When her battered ships limped home from Relleker, General Keah wasted no time rallying the troops throughout the LOC. “You’re all going to have to get your butts in gear—right now!”

  The attack on a major Confederation colony was not news she wanted to keep confidential. Through Nadd, she had sent telink reports to green priests aboard her deployed patrol ships, and she placed CDF headquarters on maximum alert. As the Kutuzov returned to the complex in the dispersed rubble of the Moon, she transmitted her message to high command. “The threat affects everyone, and I want to announce this on all public channels on Earth. We need each person in the solar system to know what might be coming.”

  First Officer Wingo was hesitant. “You could start a panic, General. Is it wise to tell the public how vulnerable our planets are?”

  “As opposed to letting them think we’re all perfectly safe, with nothing to worry about?” She snorted. “In an emergency, there is no benefit to keeping secrets. You think the black robots and the Shana Rei are spying on us? They won’t give a damn what we do or don’t do. No, better to tell our people all of it, Mr. Wingo. Release our images of Relleker so that everybody can see the bugbots tearing apart our Manta cruisers and then hitting a beautiful world. If it makes Earth’s population lie wide-awake at night, then at least they won’t be caught sleeping if an attack comes. I’d bet on vigilance over ignorance any day.”

  Showing its battle scars, the Kutuzov arrived at the military complex. When the faeros had shattered the Moon and sent a hail of destructive fragments throughout the solar system, it had been a terrible disaster, but what happened at Relleker was worse.

  During the retreat, her CDF engineers had worked through all the quick fixes they could make, and the Kutuzov and the surviving Mantas were functional by the time they got home, but Keah knew that “functional” wasn’t the same as being battleworthy. At the LOC, her Mantas claimed spacedock repair facilities, and General Keah rallied construction crews to complete the necessary work on a round-the-clock schedule. “As little downtime as possible—it’s imperative to get our warships back online and ready to fight.”

  Eighty Manta cruisers were stationed at Earth, ten of which were just finishing scheduled maintenance. The Juggernauts commanded by Admirals Handies and Harvard were fully crewed and ready, but the two officers remained in their station complex in the main lunar fragment. Admiral Haroun seemed more restless now that he’d seen action during the crackdown on Rakkem. It had woken him up. He stayed aboard the Okrun, ready.

  After docking the Kutuzov, she marched into the headquarters complex to meet with high command. “I’m not going to sugarcoat this for you all. Sit down, buckle in, and have a look at what we’re up against.” She forced her line commanders to watch the consolidated footage from Relleker. The devastating engagement had lasted less than an hour, although at the time it had seemed like a hellish eternity.

  She watched their expressions of alarm and disbelief; several of them—thankfully—looked hungry for revenge, while others seemed on the verge of panic. Silently, she noted which ones those were. Though she had watched the images over and over, she still felt a chill to see the hundreds of thousands of bugbot ships swarming around Relleker, sterilizing the planetary surface, closing in around every evacuating spacecraft including three of her Mantas, while the Shana Rei hexes disrupted all the cities on the planet.

  “To the best of our knowledge, there are no survivors,” Keah s
aid.

  Admiral Handies said, “But those robot warships … there must be thousands of them.”

  “Close to a million,” Keah said. “We analyzed the images on our flight back.”

  An unannounced visitor was escorted into the briefing chamber. He was a pale-skinned, bald man who looked quiet and unassuming: Deputy Eldred Cain. “This is far worse than I feared, General.”

  Deputy Cain, who had once served and then betrayed the Chairman of the Terran Hanseatic League, had administered Earth for the Confederation since the end of the Elemental War. A competent leader, Cain had reached the level of his ambitions and was perfectly content in his role.

  Ignoring the other officers in the briefing, he shook Keah’s hand and took a seat beside her. He said firmly, “Now we are all going to watch that record again from start to finish.”

  Admiral Harvard said, “We’ve just seen it, Deputy. It’s an hour long, and we should get started on our strategy sessions.”

  Keah knew what Cain was suggesting, though. “No, Admiral. The Deputy is correct. The first time through, you all watched in shock. Pay closer attention the second time, see what we could have done differently and learn from the encounter—otherwise those people died for nothing.”

  She replayed the images, hoping for some insight or revelation. When she saw Admiral Handies avert his eyes, she nudged him and made him watch. Once the images were finished, General Keah stood. “There, plenty of incentive. It’s time for the CDF to get its act together.”

  “But what more can we do against an enemy like that, General?” Admiral Harvard sounded distraught.

  “Everything—and I’m open to suggestions beyond that.” She turned to Cain. “Mr. Deputy, I’m going to visit Dr. Krieger’s manufacturing stations and inspect our sun-bomb production. Would you care to join me? I’m driving.”

  Leaving the senior command staff flustered and uneasy in the LOC headquarters, she and Cain took a CDF in-system shuttle to the smaller lunar fragments and free-floating metallic spheres that comprised the weapons-manufacturing facilities devoted to sun-bomb production. Meanwhile, assembly lines on Earth were pumping out laser cannons even faster than they could be installed on the CDF ships.

  Keah studied the output database and gave a grim nod. “I do not intend to be caught with my pants down again, Mr. Deputy.”

  The pale-skinned man responded with a wry expression. “I don’t believe you intended to be caught with your pants down in the first place.” She grunted to acknowledge the poor joke as she docked the small craft against Krieger’s main facility. Cain continued, “We have determination, we have equipment, we have all the funding we could reasonably need. It’s not resolve we’re lacking, General, but effectiveness.”

  “Give me a million sun bombs, and I’ll be pretty damned effective.”

  “Dr. Krieger is working on that.”

  The weapons scientist was delighted and energetic—perhaps overly energetic—when he greeted them inside his facility. “We’re ready for your inspection, General. I know you’ll be pleased.”

  The primary sun-bomb factory was anchored to the surface of a lunar fragment far from the denser cluster of LOC operations. From that vantage, Keah could see the operational lights of four other drifting facilities spaced far enough apart so that if an unfortunate accident detonated a sun bomb, the shock waves would not destroy the remaining facilities. She couldn’t afford to have a clumsy chain reaction wipe out their best chance again.

  Krieger bobbed his head. “I assure you, General, we’ve achieved a balance of peak production speed and safety interlocks so you don’t have to worry about a repeat of … last time.”

  “Let’s not talk about last time,” Keah grumbled. “No more accidents. Your new sun bombs were marvelous at the Onthos system, and they left a few good bruises when we turned them loose at Relleker.”

  “But Relleker was still lost, General.” Krieger looked embarrassed, as if that were somehow his fault.

  “A hell of a lot of bugbots were lost too, and I know we damaged the Shana Rei hex ships. We just needed more sun bombs. A lot more. We never expected to face a million robots. We have no idea where they all came from.”

  “Five sun-bomb production factories are online right now,” Krieger said, “and I’m running a very tight ship. Facilities six and seven should be online within three weeks. At present, I have forty-two completed sun bombs right here in these factories, ready to be placed aboard CDF ships.”

  “Good, then I can replenish what we used at Relleker. The Kutuzov needs to be reloaded,” Keah said. “I’ll have someone arrange to receive them no later than tomorrow. Our arsenals are only at a quarter strength.”

  The weapons scientist was relieved to be back in her good graces. “It’ll be my pleasure to be excessive, General.”

  “Don’t slow production under any circumstances,” Deputy Cain warned. “The shadow threat appears to be growing.”

  “We are in full agreement, Mr. Deputy,” Keah said, and cracked her knuckles. “I am already looking forward to our next brawl with the Shana Rei.”

  Satisfied, the two departed from the weapons installation, and she flew Cain back to a transfer station so he could return to Earth. He had built a private mansion on the rim of the Madrid impact crater. He did most of his leadership from there, where he could contemplate decisions while surrounded by his rare art collection. Keah preferred to be on the bridge of her Juggernaut.

  After bidding the Deputy farewell, Keah headed the small shuttle back toward the LOC, already thinking about vigorous practice drills that would keep her high command on their toes. Her tacticians would have to study the recent battles at Relleker and in the Onthos system to determine the most effective distribution of sun-bomb blasts for later engagements.

  She flew alone for an hour, circling the military base, and eventually set course back to the Kutuzov, to inspect progress on the repairs in spacedock.

  She knew the next attack could come anywhere, any time. With the entire CDF on perpetual high alert, she was ready to jump at the next chance she got. She wanted to inflict a lot more damage next time she encountered the enemy.

  Unfortunately, she did not have to go far or wait long.

  Just outside the range of lunar orbit as she made her way to the Kutuzov, Keah veered off course as she saw the universe convulse and twist with a roiling blackness, a shadow cloud pouring out of nowhere. Space split open and vomited out a storm of angular black ships, hundreds of thousands of bugbot attackers followed by giant hexagonal cylinders.

  The Shana Rei arrived in a silent shout of black thunder, and the robot fleet plunged toward the military complex.

  CHAPTER

  44

  GARRISON REEVES

  He had not expected to return to Rendezvous so soon. The place had been cold and haunted, populated with nothing but memories. When he and Orli had stopped here two months earlier, Garrison had meant for that to be his farewell, a way to bury his ghosts.

  Now Xander and Terry would bring the place alive again.

  Garrison’s father had devoted years to the pointless task of restoring the broken asteroid cluster, with no thought for how the clans had changed. That ill-conceived effort had failed, but Xander and Terry had a better plan.

  After the uproar Elisa caused when she appeared at Academ, Garrison had decided to bring Seth with him as he and Orli started their new adventure at Rendezvous. Even though the wentals had driven Elisa off, Garrison didn’t want to risk leaving his son at the school, fearing she might come back. Elisa was not one to give up easily.

  Though Seth wanted to stay at Academ with his fellow students, he seemed just as happy to be with DD. Right now, the two were reviewing homework in the Prodigal Son’s back compartment. As Garrison flew on final approach to Rendezvous, he heard DD quizzing Seth, posing celestial-mechanics problems on the display wall.

  Before Olaf Reeves finally gave up and led his people off on an ill-advised exodus, they had managed
to rebuild a few of the less damaged asteroid complexes. Hangar bays, life-support systems, interior passages and chambers were all ready for habitation again. The asteroids themselves would provide the raw materials necessary for the repair facilities once Handon Station started attracting traffic.

  “I’d call this my second chance,” Garrison said, “but we’re well past that.”

  “It’s our second chance,” Orli said, and leaned close to him.

  He was so happy to be back with her. He woke up every day with a sense of optimism. They felt so right together. During their month-long hiatus, they had each experienced their share of excitement, and had concluded that if they were going to have so many troubles, they might as well face them together.

  The system’s red dwarf sun didn’t provide much light for the interconnected asteroids, but artificial illumination banks lit up the central rock and a handful of docking stations. As they flew in toward the functional asteroids, Garrison saw several other small ships there, initial crews that had already come from Newstation.

  The comm crackled, and Xander transmitted, “Come in and make yourselves at home, Prodigal Son. We’ve got a lot of work to do together.”

  Once Garrison landed inside the bay and shut down the engines, Seth and DD were the first to bound out of the ship. Accompanied by OK, Xander came toward them, wiping his hands on a rag. Seth was delighted to see the other compy and went up to introduce himself.

  At Xander’s curious look, Orli nodded in the boy’s direction. “He’s as interested in compies as I am. Seth can be my assistant if I open a compy-upgrade business while the rest of you work on repairing salvaged vessels here at Handon Station.”

  Terry came out of the main receiving office, pulling himself along in the asteroid’s low gravity. “We have to find a better name for this place.”

  “Too late,” Xander said, both flippant and determined.