The Dark Between the Stars

by Kevin J. Anderson

  “We must be in the right place, then.” Orli listened to the continued silence from the comm. “Calling clan Reeves, please respond.”

  DD studied his readings. “This is puzzling to me, Orli. All seventeen of the Roamer ships are simply adrift in the vicinity with power systems shut down, no life support.”

  Orli shot the compy a surprised look. “What do you mean—they’re not docked to the station? Why would clan Reeves set them loose?”

  “I was asking you that question, Orli.”

  “That makes no sense at all.” She repeated her transmission, but got only more silence. She frowned and took her finger off the comm button. They would have heard her call; either they were unwilling to answer, or unable to. “Rlinda sent us out here because she was worried about those people. Maybe she was right. We’d better find some answers.”

  She adjusted course to take the Proud Mary past one of the drifting ships and verified that it was just an empty vessel, apparently undamaged, but cold and dark. If anyone had been on that ship, they were dead now.

  The space city had not been built by humans—that much was obvious—but it didn’t look Ildiran or Klikiss either. The symbols on the outside were incomprehensible, particularly the bright pink triangles near the hatches. DD scanned the ship’s databases, but found no reference or significance to the designs.

  One of the landing bays near the hub was wide open, like a gaping mouth, but glowstrips and guidance triangles were still illuminated. “At least somebody left a light on for us,” she said. She landed the Proud Mary inside the open bay, and when the weight of her ship pressed down on the pressure pads, the big doors glided shut, and the bay automatically began to refill with air.

  “Everything seems to be working,” Orli said. “But still no response from the comm. We’re going to have to investigate this in person.”

  Once the atmosphere checked out, they stepped into the pressurized landing bay and headed toward the hatch that connected with the rest of the space city. DD stood before the controls. “These are alien electronics and engineering, Orli. I don’t comprehend them.”

  On the adjacent bulkhead, though, Orli found a different control pad that had been jacked into the main system. “These are Roamer add-ons. Somebody rigged a bypass.” She ran her fingers over the familiar pad, reading standard air pressure and temperature on the other side of the hatch. “They made the interior ready for human habitation.”

  “I recommend that we exercise caution, Orli. There could still be danger.”

  “I agree—something happened to those people.” She went back to the Proud Mary, rummaged in the captain’s locker, and withdrew a hand jazer, just in case. The Retroamers had turned their backs on human civilization, preferring isolation. Maybe they were too isolated. Someone could have gone berserk, perhaps released poison gas into the station atmosphere? She put on a facemask and found a portable air tank, which she strapped to her waist. Now she was ready.

  Carrying the weapon, she opened the jury-rigged hatch into the main station. When she and DD entered the eerily silent alien city, a chill went down her back, though the temperature was warm and the lights were bright. Perfectly habitable and welcoming.

  “Hello? Anybody home?” she called. DD picked up the refrain, calling out every few seconds in a piping voice that carried along the empty corridors.

  Orli stepped into an open chamber—and found the body of a middle-aged woman wearing a typical Roamer jumpsuit with pockets, zippers, and embroidered markings. Her skin was blotched and discolored. She hadn’t been dead long. Orli pressed the mask tighter against her face. Poison? Nerve gas?

  A plague?

  She and DD pushed onward. In the second module they found an entire family huddled together, dead. Orli stared aghast. Whatever it was had struck them down quickly. Inside a larger chamber they found forty-three more, all gathered as if in a last community meeting.

  “There could still be survivors sealed in other chambers,” DD suggested. “This is a very large city.”

  “How does a compy get to be such an optimist?”

  “It’s in my original programming.”

  Inside the community chamber, one of the bodies had distinctive green skin. When he died, the green priest had knocked over a potted treeling that now spilled onto the deck, its fronds withering.

  Orli breathed rapidly into her mask, close to hyperventilating. She felt her skin crawl and wondered how the disease or poison was transmitted—through simple respiration? Through the pores of the skin, or the moisture of the eyes?

  “I should have worn a full environment suit,” she said.

  “I can go back and retrieve one,” DD offered.

  “Too late now. Let’s keep looking. Maybe someone left a log entry.”

  At the control hub, they found a gray-bearded man at a desk surrounded by control screens. He was slumped into his chair, his head tilted forward, cold.

  Orli recognized him. “I think that’s Olaf Reeves.”

  “It does match the images in my database.”

  Orli crept around the desk and forced herself to look at the main screen that Olaf Reeves had been using. It was still recording—the clan leader had tried to leave a final message. According to the counter, he had begun the recording nine hours and twenty-four minutes earlier.

  She ran the file back, skimming it in reverse past hours and hours of his motionless body staring at the imager. Finally, near the beginning, he started to move and talk again, and she replayed his message.

  His voice was raspy. “I am Olaf Reeves, head of clan Reeves. My people came to this abandoned city to create a self-sufficient colony, to make a new start. We didn’t know that the original inhabitants of this station had perished from a deadly plague, thousands of years ago. Now my clan has found death here as well.

  “We are completely quarantined, and I jettisoned our ships so no one could escape and spread the disease. As of this recording, every one of my people has been infected. Most have already died, including”—his voice broke—“my son and his family. Our green priest dispatched a warning, but I’ll transmit this recording too. If you receive this message, stay away. This entire station is contaminated. I will not let the alien plague spread. If it gets loose in the Confederation, it could kill billions.”

  Each breath was labored, and dark splotches covered Olaf’s face as he stared into the imager. His shoulders trembled. “To make damn sure, I’m going to destroy this city. My compies—” Then he went into a spasm of coughing that did not end. He vomited blood, and after a severe seizure he collapsed into unconsciousness. At some point during the remaining nine hours of the recording, he died at his desk.

  Orli just stared, knowing that the clan head had meant to send his message on a repeating broadcast, but he had succumbed before he could complete his recording. She’d had no contact with Kett Shipping since she departed on this journey. Orli and DD had come here, unaware.

  She stared silently for a long moment. “That means I’ve been exposed, DD.”

  “That is a matter of great concern, Orli, but I should point out that you wore a breathing mask.”

  Orli shook her head. “I didn’t don the facemask until we went into the city. The landing bay would have repressurized with station air. And if it’s all contaminated . . .” Still, she didn’t know for certain.

  A Teacher compy strutted through the doorway of the admin hub. “I came to report on our progress. Is Mr. Reeves not receiving visitors?”

  “Never again,” Orli said. “He’s dead.”

  “Oh.” The Teacher compy paused to reassess. “I am BO, assigned as special tutor to the clan Reeves children. Unfortunately, I no lon-ger have any students.”

  “A pleasure to meet you. I am DD, a Friendly compy. This is Orli Covitz, captain of the Proud Mary.” He seemed happy to make the introductions. “Where are your students?”

  “They are all dead. I was the only Teacher compy on the station, but there are five other compies
. I came to report to Olaf Reeves that we are nearly finished with the task he assigned us.”

  “What task?” Orli asked.

  “Olaf Reeves gave us orders to modify the power blocks and alien energy reactors to generate an overload sufficient to destroy this entire city. It is imperative that no one else be infected. Olaf Reeves was not convinced that his warning would be heeded. The plague remained viable aboard this station for centuries or millennia, and he was certain that once humans learned about the derelict city, someone at some point would come here exploring.” BO’s voice changed, and she sounded more like a stern schoolteacher. “I see you did not heed the warning. Now I recognize his wisdom regarding human nature.”

  “I didn’t receive any warning. He never finished or transmitted his recording. We arrived too late.”

  “That is disappointing,” BO said. “I believe all members of clan Reeves are deceased. Fortunately, that removes a matter of some consternation among the compies.”

  “What matter of consternation?”

  “The reactor explosion will be sufficient to vaporize all components of this station. If any Roamers were still alive, our compy programming would preclude us from causing the detonation that would kill them.”

  Orli was intimately familiar with the protective strictures embedded in compy core programming. “Failure to detonate the station might lead to continued spread of the plague. By waiting, you could endanger the lives of entire planetary populations.”

  “That did cause a conundrum. In the meantime, preparing the linked reactors for detonation is a complex and time-consuming process, which we have not finished yet. Now the conundrum is solved.”

  Orli and DD followed BO to the hub engineering chambers where the Worker compies were connecting a series of power blocks to the alien reactor, while others strung linked secondary explosives up into the spokes. Watching all the dutiful compies brought tears to Orli’s eyes. It reminded her of her own compies back on Relleker, who were now happily (she hoped) assigned to the Ikbir colony.

  BO said, “Since you are here, Orli Covitz, you are certainly infected. Now we will have to wait until you perish before we detonate the station.”

  EIGHTY-EIGHT

  AELIN

  Elisa Enturi returned to the bloater-extraction operations with great fanfare. “We have sealed a deal, sir—expanded ekti-X distribution operations with Kett Shipping.”

  Listening to the discussion without interest, Aelin sat alone and sad in the headquarters module. He touched his treeling, let his thoughts wander among messages from thousands of green priests. Aelin drew comfort from the everyday personal activities across the Spiral Arm.

  As he watched the ekti-extraction operations among the drained bloater sacks in space, he no longer felt the joy and wonder he had once experienced. The industrial activity was extensive and exotic compared to the forests of Theroc, but Aelin had felt stifled because he couldn’t share these wonders with his fellow green priests.

  Shelud’s death, though, changed everything.

  Iswander was never generous with his smiles but he gave one to Elisa now. It was just business as usual. “They met our terms without complaint?”

  “A few complaints, but they had no real leverage. Your gift of ekti-X to King Peter and our constant shipments are already causing tremors in the stardrive fuel market. Nobody knows where the supplies come from, but prices have started dropping, and traditional skyminers have gone from being curious to being worried. We’ll have six more Kett vessels to deliver ekti-X from both our primary and secondary extraction fields.”

  She added an even more confident smile. “And I’m certain that if we cast a wide sensor net in the interstellar void where no one else has looked before, we’ll discover even more bloater clusters. They’ve got to be out there. I don’t know how they’ve gone unnoticed all this time. They seem to be appearing everywhere.”

  Iswander called up displays of optimistic and pessimistic projections. “We have to be careful that we don’t glut the market, while we bank all possible profits. I’ve already diverted a third of our production into storage silos. We can build up a huge strategic stockpile of stardrive fuel.”

  Aelin’s admiration for Lee Iswander remained undiminished. He had once viewed the man as the personification of the human spirit, taking risks and pushing boundaries. While he tutored young Arden in physics and engineering (learning much about those subjects himself), the green priest also taught him about his father’s business ventures, both successes and failures, including the spectacular failures—like Sheol—as well as the spectacular successes, such as these ekti-X operations.

  But recently Shelud had contacted him through telink, told him about the Onthos plague and how all of clan Reeves was dying. His brother revealed everything to him, and once a message was sent through telink, all green priests could access it. Aelin didn’t care that their private last moments were experienced widely.

  Through telink, he and Shelud talked and talked, and he’d connected to his brother’s ever-more-wavering and chaotic thoughts at the very end. Shelud described the plague symptoms in excruciating, painful detail until his thoughts became blurred, disjointed.

  On the alien space city, Shelud had walked among the dying Roamers, listening to their stories and repeating them into his treeling so that the worldforest, at least, would remember them. The last survivors had gathered in one of the community rooms, knowing they had little time left. Shelud remained connected via telink even as the fever surged through him and his body died.

  Aelin kept talking to his brother, giving him a familiar voice to hold on to, a comforting lifeline. And then Shelud’s thoughts slipped away. In the final moment he took the only refuge of a green priest, pouring the remnants of his mind and soul into the trees, letting all his thoughts live among the verdani so that he was at least partially preserved. . . .

  Now, in the headquarters module, Aelin only half listened to Elisa giving her excited report to Iswander. She seemed so brave and confident. “You lost everything on Sheol, sir . . . and I lost my son, and husband.” She didn’t look affected at all. “But we’re recovering.”

  Surprised, Aelin lifted his head from the treeling. Was it possible that she didn’t know? “You are mistaken, Elisa Enturi. Your son isn’t dead. Your husband isn’t dead. They both survived the explosion.”

  Elisa stared at him. “What are you saying, green priest?”

  “I have seen their messages sent through telink. Garrison Reeves works in the rubble shepherding operations at Earth. Your son, Seth, is in school at Academ with other Roamer children. Were you not aware of this?”

  Elisa looked aghast and then furious—not at all what Aelin expected. If someone had surprised him with news that Shelud still lived, he would have been overjoyed. He said, “I thought you’d be happy.”

  Elisa whirled to Iswander. “He tricked me! He’s still got Seth.”

  Flustered, Iswander waved a hand to calm her. “Of course, take a ship and go. I know you want to see your son.”

  She was already moving out of the admin module. “I have to rescue him.”

  EIGHTY-NINE

  GENERAL NALANI KEAH

  Along with the Kutuzov, General Keah decided to bring three battle groups to the next round of exercises with the Ildiran Solar Navy. To lead them, she chose three of her Grid Admirals, specifically the ones most fond of their desks. She called those men the “Three H’s”—Admirals Handies, Harvard, and Haroun. She figured they needed the practice.

  True, the Three H’s were skilled in the administrative complexities of the Confederation Defense Forces. Admiral Handies had made his mark managing the Grid 0 portion of the fleet, which encompassed Earth, the Lunar Orbital Complex, and the Mars military base; Haroun and Harvard, who managed Grids 6 and 11, respectively, were also adept at paperwork. While Keah wasn’t one to wax poetic about the glories of combat, she did need to pry the three admirals away from their offices and give them some real exper
ience.

  Adar Zan’nh had promised to share new information his people had uncovered about the legendary Shana Rei and the possibility of their reappearance. Keah was skeptical of scary stories about bogeymen that lived in the shadows, but she herself had seen the dark nebula that swallowed the fleeing black robot ships, and she had viewed the images of the blackness vomiting up from the clouds of Golgen. Something sure as hell was going on.

  She and the Adar both saw the enormity of the potential threat, and the CDF and the Solar Navy were stepping up the intensity of their war games until they figured out what they were dealing with. Zan’nh was bringing an entire maniple of warliners this time—seven septas, or forty-nine ships.

  It should be a good challenge.

  Keah realized that standard space battle routines would be useless against an intangible enemy like that shadow cloud at Dhula. Nevertheless, the exercises would give her CDF personnel hands-on practice and would keep them on their toes.

  She flew the Kutuzov out to the Plumas system for the exercises, though her role in this case was just to observe. The Three H’s had Juggernauts and Mantas, and would be responsible for their own movements. Keah was anxious to see how they interacted.

  The CDF ships arrived early in the system, and not by accident. Even though these were scheduled war games, General Keah never took anything at face value. She trusted Adar Zan’nh for the most part, but she had been there at that terrible battlefield in Earth orbit twenty years ago. She had witnessed the astounding treachery when supposed allies had turned against the human military in their last stand. She didn’t intend to be fooled again—ever.

  The CDF battle groups appeared over the frozen moon of Plumas, a water-refueling station and deep ice mines still run by the Roamer clan Tamblyn. Ron Tamblyn, the current manager of the water mines, was not overly pleased when informed that the CDF and Solar Navy would engage in complicated exercises in the vicinity. He complained that the activity would disrupt his usual business, until Keah reminded him that many of the participating ships would need to take on large loads of water—at full price. Mollified, the Roamers kept their heads down, remaining in the grotto beneath the Plumas ice sheets.