Eternity's Mind

by Kevin J. Anderson

  Like angry hornets from a smashed nest, black robot ships swarmed out by the thousands. Her mercenary fleet shouted alarms, and Pergamus facility-lockdown systems engaged. Klaxons rang out, and flashing magenta lights strobed through the corridors and sealed labs, calling everyone to full emergency status.

  Tom Rom’s voice crackled across the open intercom, barking orders to the mercenary ships. “Stand your ground—attack the intruders! Do not let them approach Pergamus.” His command was bold but absurd. Her mercenary fleet was only large enough to drive away curiosity seekers; they could never stand against this.

  To their credit, five mercenary ships plunged toward the robot vessels, opening fire. Their jazers even destroyed two robot ships before the defenders were vaporized—all of them. Her other ten perimeter patrol ships turned about and fled the system.

  The shadow cloud headed straight for Pergamus.

  Zoe was aware of what had happened at Earth and Relleker. The black robots had devastated those planets, obliterated every city on the surface. The small Pergamus outpost didn’t stand a chance.

  The Shana Rei cloud expanded as it came closer. The first group of robot ships plunged into the poisonous atmosphere, but they did not open fire, did not drop devastation bombs. This was obviously a different kind of assault from before. The invaders did not mean just to destroy—not at first. The black robot ships were descending to the surface for some other purpose.

  Zoe felt a deeper cold of terror and anger as she guessed that they intended to seize the assets of Pergamus. All the plague samples.

  Tom Rom’s face appeared on the screen. “I am coming for you, Zoe. I’ll get you out of here—no matter what it takes.”

  Then she heard the first explosion. It resonated through the main outer dome—but it was not from a robot attack. Tom Rom had detonated a shaped charge that blasted through the first of the seventeen decontamination locks. He was breaching the barriers. He was going to rush inside her sterile dome and save her.

  She knew he would.

  She got ready.

  CHAPTER

  92

  GENERAL NALANI KEAH

  It felt damned good to be flying the Kutuzov alongside the Solar Navy warliners again. General Keah felt strong and confident as she looked out at the forty-nine magnificent alien ships, with their exotic design and extended solar-sail fins. After the ass-kicking she had received at Earth and Relleker, she needed some real payback.

  Sitting on the bridge of her Juggernaut, she let the excitement and anger build. She leaned forward to address the screen image of Adar Zan’nh, who stood in the command nucleus of his own flagship. “I feel good about this, Z. It’ll be a sucker punch to the damn shadows—a real kick in the balls.”

  Zan’nh seemed confused by her comment. “I’m not certain that such anatomical references are applicable to the Shana Rei.”

  “It’s a metaphor, Z. Don’t be so literal.” Come to think of it, she had never asked about the testicular arrangement of Ildirans either, although she supposed the appropriate parts must be similar, since they could interbreed with humans.

  The Kutuzov and the Okrun were the CDF’s two remaining Juggernauts, and she had forty-five Manta cruisers that were functional enough to fight. After the retreat from Earth, CDF engineers had worked around the clock, using the commercial spacedock facilities at Theroc to make repairs. She had made her priorities clear. “It doesn’t have to be pretty, but it does have to work—at least for one more engagement.” All of her soldiers knew the stakes.

  They had rounded up a good portion of the ships that were still available to fight for the Confederation. Some remained at Theroc to defend the capital, but Keah—and everyone else for that matter—knew that all of the remaining defenses would not be sufficient against a frontal attack from the Shana Rei. They had to defeat the shadows some other way, and this was it. The mission into the void would be an all-or-nothing gamble. They would never have a second chance to hit the Shana Rei by surprise.

  A substantial and intimidating fleet of nearly a hundred battleships, Confederation and Ildiran, was on its way to the nebula. Ahead of them, Fireheart blazed in its ionized splendor, and at its core burned a cluster of gargantuan stars that ignited the entire sea of gases.

  “Approaching the dust boundary, General,” said Lieutenant Tait. “It might get a little bumpy.”

  “Plenty of Roamers fly through with their junk-heap ships all the time,” she said. “Stay steady and keep our shields at full strength.”

  The Ildiran warliners retracted their solar-sail fins, and the strike force plunged through the boundary where photonic pressure from the core stars had piled up interstellar dust. The passage was somewhat rough, but the hundred ships held on and passed safely through into the diffuse sea.

  Keah snorted. “That was nothing more than potty ripples compared to getting away from Earth a week ago.”

  “When you put it that way, General…” said her first officer.

  She had seen a diagram of the Roamer facilities inside Fireheart Station, but she was even more impressed when she saw floating frames covered with stretched-out energy films for power blocks, huge scoops to harvest exotic isotopes, as well as the scientific, admin, and habitation units.

  “Radiation levels are high, sir,” said Sensor Chief Saliba, “but tolerable, with a little extra shielding.”

  “Roamers live here all the time,” said Keah. “If we find a way to face the shadows, a little ambient radiation is going to be the least of your concerns.”

  No one disagreed with her.

  Alongside the CDF fleet, the Ildiran warliners cruised along in perfect formation. Keah was surprised that Adar Zan’nh didn’t show off with fancy skyparade maneuvers. She had fought many engagements with the Adar; she respected and even liked him. They were colleagues as well as rivals.

  “We’re about to go down in history, Z,” she transmitted as they flew toward the admin hub. “You think I’ll be part of your Saga of Seven Suns?”

  “If anyone survives to record it,” said Zan’nh. “We brought five rememberers, including Rememberer Anton. I hope that some are able to chronicle the event for the sake of history.”

  “Right … for the sake of history,” Keah said. “Not to mention that it would be nice to survive.”

  “That as well,” the Adar said.

  Some of the military ships approached the Fireheart admin hub while Admiral Haroun’s Okrun patrolled the nebula and circled the black maw where the nebula gases disappeared. General Keah and Adar Zan’nh went aboard to meet with Station Chief Alu and review the images Kotto Okiah had taken in his scout expedition, where he’d found the dormant Shana Rei hiding in their void.

  Keah entered Chief Alu’s designated meeting room, joined by Adar Zan’nh and the human historian Anton Colicos, who captured an image of both Keah and Zan’nh. “For posterity. You know that this could be a pivotal expedition.”

  “I hope it’s a damned successful one,” Keah muttered, then looked around the room. Howard Rohandas and Shareen Fitzkellum were sitting there for the meeting, both of them clearly nervous. Keah was surprised. “They’re just kids!”

  “Intelligent and innovative ones,” Shareen said, indignant. “Believe me, you’ll want us along with you when you go in there.”

  “We have studied all the void data more than anyone else,” Howard added. “We’re your best assets.”

  Keah snorted. “I never agreed to take two teenagers aboard the Kutuzov.”

  “But you will,” Shareen said. “No one knows that other dimension better than we do. We’ve studied every bit of data that came back from Kotto’s survey craft. We’ve been analyzing it ever since.”

  Howard said, “Kotto wouldn’t let us go along last time, and maybe we could have saved him. We won’t make that mistake twice.”

  “Before our strike force enters that dimensional space, we will want to know the hazards Kotto Okiah found,” said Zan’nh. “I understand he did not s
urvive? We should be prepared.”

  Keah nodded. “Right. How do we protect ourselves against whatever the shadows used to fry Kotto’s brain?”

  “The Shana Rei didn’t cause the surge in him,” Shareen said. “That was another thing entirely, a different presence … separate from the shadows. Something he called Eternity’s Mind.”

  “It’s quite clear from the mission records,” Howard added. “He intentionally sought it out.”

  Keah muttered, “Great, another threat to look forward to.”

  Zan’nh looked over at her. “Are you having second thoughts about the mission, General? Should we perhaps send only one battleship into the void and see what happens?”

  “That would defeat the purpose of a full-on surprise attack. This isn’t the time to dip our pinky toes into the water.”

  Shareen said, “I was worried about all of us being zapped by Eternity’s Mind, like Kotto, but he survived in the void for a long time without being affected. It wasn’t until he intentionally connected to that other presence, opened himself to a flood of knowledge, that he was harmed.”

  “If we do not initiate a contact with Eternity’s Mind, we should be safe,” Howard said.

  “Hell, I’m only interested in the Shana Rei,” Keah said. “And for an opportunity like this, we’ll take the risk. It’s the best chance I’ve seen so far.” She swallowed in a dry throat as she thought of her failure to protect Earth.

  “We can thank Kotto for it,” Shareen said. “And Howard and I are going along.”

  Keah looked at the two. “All right, if you two can contribute, then I’ll let you come along. But I can’t guarantee your safety any more than I can promise any of my soldiers will come back alive.”

  Shareen nodded. “And we still want to go along.”

  Keah turned to the Adar. “Well, Z, let’s rally our ships and make our plan. Next stop, into the void.” She gave him a hard grin. “How else are we going to get the Shana Rei?”

  CHAPTER

  93

  RLINDA KETT

  The Voracious Curiosity and Declan’s Glory headed off to the Fireheart nebula on the mission Jess and Cesca had given them. Even though the two ships flew close together, they had no direct communication while using the Ildiran stardrive. In an emergency, either pilot could send an alert pulse, and they would drop out of faster-than-light travel, so they could confer.

  Rlinda carried the glowing wental water that they were supposed to deliver. She knew how important and how powerful the liquid was, and she hoped the green priests would know what to do with it.

  Flying alone in Declan’s Glory, Rlinda found herself stroking the capsule of BeBob’s ashes. She still had trouble believing her favorite ex-husband would drop dead of an aneurysm as he crossed the street. “A strange ending after all the crazy adventures we both survived, BeBob.” She shook her head, then placed the capsule on the console in front of her.

  Since that time, Rlinda had lost some weight, and she had grown much older. But she knew that Captain Branson Roberts would still have found her attractive. He’d been wiry, scruffy, even goofy-looking, but she loved him anyway. “How I miss you now…”

  Alone in her ship, Rlinda had a lot of time to think, and too much thinking time was not necessarily a good thing. She had so many memories, so many things to do, and not a lot of regrets (but some). She generally lived in the present; she loved life and decided to make the most of it. She stuck to that. Rlinda was a sociable person, but now she was in a big empty ship. She leaned back in the expanded piloting chair, regarded the silver capsule. “I don’t like to sit around feeling sorry for myself or mulling things too much.”

  She got up and went to the Declan’s woefully insufficient galley and looked in dismay at the stored food there. “How can anyone survive with this?” She glanced back at the capsule, knowing BeBob had never paid much attention to food, despite her best efforts to get him to appreciate the finer things. “Well, I’m a resourceful person, and I can make the best of it. Certainly enough to cook a meal for one.”

  Eventually, she decided to tear open several prepackaged meals and deconstruct the ingredients so she could cook up something edible. She managed that … just barely.

  As she ate, she thought about Prince Reynald, whom she affectionately called “Raindrop.” She had helped the young man see the best medical specialists on Earth, but from the reports she’d heard, he was growing much worse, and there was no cure in sight. Unlike BeBob’s sudden unexpected death, poor Raindrop’s suffering was long and drawn-out … and woefully premature.

  She sighed, thinking of the dear boy. She tapped a finger on the silver capsule. “Once we’re done at Fireheart, BeBob, I’m going to see him on Theroc, just to give him a hug if nothing else.” She wiped her mouth with a napkin and gathered up the dirty dishes from her not-awful meal. “And I owe Xander and Terry a visit, too—we should see their new trading hub at Rendezvous.”

  In fact, she needed to do a lot of things, and Rlinda decided to keep a list—a bucket list, she supposed. She pocketed the capsule again. “You never know how long you might remain alive. A bucket list is something to take seriously.” There were so many things she had wanted to do with BeBob.

  That was the problem with being alone—having too much time to think.

  Two days from Fireheart Station, Rlinda detected something ahead that was strange enough to catch her attention. “Anomalies” often turned out to be dangerous, and she considered just racing past without drawing any attention to herself. But she also wanted to know what it was.

  Nearby, Tasia and Robb cruised along in the Voracious Curiosity. Rlinda had no doubt they were having a fine time together. She sent a communication ping for the Curiosity to drop into normal space again so they could take a quick look at whatever had distorted their sensors ahead. She shut down her own stardrive, and the Curiosity dropped out immediately thereafter. Robb and Tasia had spotted the anomaly, too.

  When the ships found themselves drifting close to an uncharted dark nebula, the roiling shadow cloud struck fear in Rlinda’s heart. “Never should’ve stopped,” she said. “Better get out of here before they detect us!”

  “Wait,” Tasia interrupted. “Something’s happening. Look at the fringes, use Doppler scanners.”

  “It’s collapsing, not expanding,” Robb added. “The implosion velocity is off the charts.”

  Rlinda realized that the large black nebula was indeed condensing, its outer fringes falling inward, as if surrounded by a giant clenching fist. Rlinda could see one—and only one—of the long ebony cylinders inside. The fearsome Shana Rei ship was broken, its long crystalline sides cracked, shattered.

  In the middle of the collapsing gas cloud, a ruddy ember shone out as nuclear reactions ignited inside a proto-star, brightening as more and more dark matter fell into the center of mass, adding fuel. The new star began to burn.

  “Shizz, would you look at that!” Tasia said. “A hundred sun bombs wouldn’t blast away that much of a shadow cloud.”

  “It’s not sun bombs,” Rlinda said. “Some other force is crushing that black nebula.”

  “Whatever it is, I’m rooting for it,” Robb said. “Anything that squashes the Shana Rei is a friend of mine.”

  The two ships took extensive images so they could show the Roamers at Fireheart Station, but Rlinda was impatient. “Nothing more we can do here. Come on, we’ve got a mission to finish.”

  “Agreed,” said Tasia.

  They broke communication and activated their stardrives again. Declan’s Glory and the Voracious Curiosity streaked away from the dying shadow cloud and headed toward Fireheart.

  CHAPTER

  94

  ARITA

  Arita’s fascination with exotic plant and animal (or “other”) species had begun at a young age. She had studied everything about the Theron worldforest, from the tiniest insects to the enormous worldtrees. She was fascinated by the wondrous possibilities of biology—and now she knew
that somewhere, in one of those countless specimens, lay a cure for her brother.

  In the past two years, she had traveled to see other peculiar life-forms the Spiral Arm had to offer. She’d studied the Whistlers on Eljiid, and she’d been to the hanging kelp-vine gardens on Atoa; she’d seen centuries-old hive mountains built by myriad tiny arachnids. Each new discovery fascinated her.

  But the bloaters were something else entirely.

  Garrison Reeves flew the Prodigal Son to an extraction operation near Ikbir run by clan Kellum. “They’ll be amenable to unexpected visitors,” he said.

  “Unlike the Iswander operations, where Elisa nearly killed us,” Orli said.

  En route, Arita spent a lot of time getting to know Orli, feeling a close kinship with the other woman. They both felt that powerful awakening presence in the cosmos; they both heard the throbbing voice inside their minds. It seemed ominous, yet supportive; infinitely wise, yet also lost … and there was desperation as well as pain. Arita didn’t know what to do.

  When the Prodigal Son arrived at the busy Kellum extraction operations, Collin cradled his potted treeling so he could transmit his observations back to the other green priests. He had never been away from Theroc before, and everything amazed him, but he tried to do his job in maintaining communication with the other green priests.

  Seth and DD pressed close to the windowports, both eager to see. Nearly a hundred Kellum ships hung among the drifting nodules. Pumping apparatus like enormous metal mosquitoes pierced the bloater membranes to harvest the stardrive fuel inside. Arita saw bright illumination banks and the darting lights of scurrying tugs and cargo haulers, tank array frameworks, a headquarters ship.

  Garrison activated the comm. “Calling Kellum ops. This is Garrison Reeves in the Prodigal Son with Orli Covitz and Arita, daughter of the King and Queen, as well as a green priest and a few other visitors. We’re here to have a look at the bloaters, if you don’t mind.”