The Dark Between the Stars

by Kevin J. Anderson

  Even when they suggested long-shot drugs, the potential side effects were severe, and the various possibilities appeared to be fatally contradictory. If one treatment failed, they couldn’t try another. Tom Rom would be dead.

  Zoe was unable to sleep and didn’t want to eat. She pestered the ORS 12 research team so mercilessly that finally the lead scientist scolded her, “You are distracting us, Ms. Alakis. We’re under enough pressure, thanks to your threat, and you could cause us to make mistakes. We will inform you the moment anything changes.” He switched off the comm.

  Zoe felt so offended that she wanted to scream, then forced calm upon herself as she realized he was right. She sat sobbing by herself inside the sterile dome. . . .

  In the end, her scientists did not let her down.

  Pulling the possible cures and treatments of every recorded malady, deconstructing the genome of the alien virus and following the pathways of infection, one of her independent teams working in a groundside dome made the proper connection by suggesting that a cure might be obtained from a distillate of the Klikiss royal jelly Tom Rom had harvested from Eljiid. Her researchers showed that something about Klikiss physiology rendered them immune to the virus. Therefore the royal Jelly might hold a key.

  With racing pulse, Zoe listened to the research team’s reports, watched the glacial progress, felt the work as a frantic race against her friend’s degeneration, even as he lay in an enforced coma. The time it took to produce the royal-jelly distillate was maddening; after it was administered, the delay was more maddening still.

  Zoe’s eyes were bloodshot and scratchy. She felt haggard, weak, and feverish, as if she had somehow become infected by her very obsession with the disease. It was eleven hours before the team on ORS 12 was able to report with confidence that the patient had turned a corner and his condition was ever-so-slightly improved.

  Fortunately, on his acquisition trip to Eljiid, Tom Rom had collected enough of the royal jelly to produce effective vaccinations for every member of the research team in the orbiting sphere. As Tom Rom slept and slowly regained his strength, Zoe commanded the research team members to remove their decontamination outfits, expose themselves to the disease, and inoculate themselves.

  “We have to be certain,” she said. “I want to see you stand by your own cure.”

  Some of the scientists took offense at being treated as guinea pigs, but they eventually acceded. After being exposed and vaccinated, they monitored themselves for three days and finally concluded that the treatment worked and that they themselves were not infected by the plague.

  Then they revived Tom Rom from his induced coma.

  Zoe, who had wrestled with the decision throughout the ordeal, at last found the courage and strength—to change her life.

  She gave herself the inoculation, then called a small one-person ship to dock against her sterile central dome. Drawing a deep breath, digging deep to find long-buried reservoirs of courage, she exited through five layers of protective decontamination zones, boarded the one-person ship, and flew up to ORS 12.

  Tom Rom was awake and aware when she cycled through the airlock and entered the spherical lab. The researchers gaped at Zoe in amazement. None of them had ever seen her in person before—very few people had.

  The smells of the processed air were strange to her, the proximity of other human beings was intimidating. Zoe fought back her nervousness, though, and came forward.

  Tom Rom stared at her, as if trying to convince himself this was not a hallucination. “You can’t take this risk.”

  “I can, and I did. You’re too weak to leave the lab yet. I could see you needed strength. Let me give it to you.”

  At his bedside, she touched his skin, felt the warm reassurance there that was so foreign to her. It had been at least fifteen years since she had touched another human being—even Tom Rom.

  But now she slid her fingers down his forearm, took his hand in hers, and squeezed. “I’m here,” she said.

  ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-SEVEN

  NIRA

  After the autopsy-chamber disaster, the remaining Ildiran bodies were spread out in the expansive arena normally used for the mirror ballet. Mage-Imperator Jora’h could not dispose of them quickly enough.

  No audience was allowed to gather, but Nira remained with him. They had both seen the horrific eruption of darkness in the sealed chamber, but thanks to the protective systems every vestige of the contaminated corpses, the autopsy specialists, and the rising shadow had been incinerated in the tremendous discharge of intense solar light.

  Jora’h would take no chances with the remaining cadavers. One hundred and two of them. The shadow stain must still be pooled inside the bodies, so they would all have to be disintegrated, flash-cremated. Lens kithmen insisted that the light of the seven suns was blessed. Maybe that light would be potent enough to erase the stain and achieve one small victory, to push the Shana Rei back.

  Under general supervision, workers had laid out the dead participants of the massacre mob—a variety of Ildiran kiths and body types—stripped away their garments and incinerated the clothing in solar furnaces. Cremation workers moved from one cadaver to the next, carrying containers of a gray metallic paste—a photothermic cream used for funeral purposes—which they slathered over the skin, like a potter working clay. Jora’h had commanded the cremation workers to work as swiftly as possible.

  Nira and Jora’h were alone in the primary observation box. This was no celebration, no spectacle of lights and colors. For a long time, neither spoke, although they shared their silent thoughts and feelings. Nira noted the troubled look in his eyes, how his long braid twitched with anxiety.

  Finally, he turned to her. “I feel greater dread with each second. If the shadow should escape here and flood out into Mijistra . . .”

  “But you know the shadow is already here.” She thought of how easily it could infiltrate the Ildirans through the thism—as it had before. She remembered feeling uneasiness among the crowds that had come out for her birthday procession, when perfectly normal Ildirans had suddenly turned into wild killers.

  Now the stadium was utterly still except for the quiet movements of the cremation workers. Outside, a full contingent of guard kithmen kept the curious away from the entrances.

  Word had spread through the city of the horrors committed in the human enclave, how Ildirans had slaughtered all those people. They knew about the assassination attempts on Nira’s birthday and the attacks in the Vault of Failures. Even though no one could understand the true cause of the violence, Ildirans whispered about the Shana Rei—and Jora’h could offer them no comfort.

  “These people aren’t at fault. They are victims, too,” she said, looking down at all those bodies. “Will the families be allowed to have funerals for their loved ones?”

  “We will give them wrapped effigies. They will have their ceremony and their time of grieving, but we won’t make a spectacle of what their people did. . . .” He dropped his voice and said much more quietly, “It is my fault. I let them down. I allowed the weakness to seep inside.”

  Nira turned to face him. “The Shana Rei did this, not you.”

  “But they may have used me to do this.” He straightened. “What if I am the weak point that makes our race vulnerable? I am the heart of the thism, and I must be the first line of defense.”

  She took his hand. “Then I’ll make you stronger.”

  All the reflection plates, lasers, and prisms from the mirror ballet had been commandeered. Illumination physicists retooled them, intensified the parabolic lenses, used laser tracers to map out the full carpet of cremation. Every component had been tested. Jora’h insisted on incinerating all the bodies at once, fearing that if they did one at a time, the shadows might have time to retaliate.

  The cremation workers finished covering the bodies with the thick gray paste, and they scurried away. Jora’h stared down at the corpses.

  A messenger rushed into the box. “Liege, the illum
ination physicists are prepared. The dome can be opened.”

  “Then bring down the light,” Jora’h said.

  “We need to bring down a great deal of it,” Nira added quietly.

  They both applied filmgoggles and adjusted them to the densest settings. The louvered awnings in the arena ceiling tilted downward to reveal polished rectangular mirrors. The mirrors gathered sunlight from every portion of the Ildiran sky, reflected it, and flashed it down into collector bowls. Lenses intensified the searing light, and it gained strength and brightness in a flash.

  Solar light poured onto the covered bodies, activating the photothermal cream, which blazed for an instant with a brightness more powerful than the core of a star. The flame incinerated every vestige of the bodies, vaporizing them so swiftly that the black taint trapped inside them was also boiled into bright nothingness. . . .

  Nira was glad to know that the Shana Rei had been defeated at Theroc by the faeros as well as Ildiran sun bombs. Adar Zan’nh was on his way back, more than victorious, and confident that the Solar Navy weapons would have some effect against the creatures of darkness. The Confederation Defense Forces would also be building many of the weapons.

  But even as these contaminated bodies were flash-cremated, and knowing the nightshade had been destroyed above Theroc, Nira could not feel relieved. “We may have hurt them, Jora’h, but the Shana Rei will be back.”

  He continued to watch the light bombardment until it was finally over. The louvered mirrors tilted again, closing off the ceiling and reflecting the sunlight back into the sky. He removed his eye protection and stared at the still-smoking ground of the mirror ballet arena. Only a smear of soot remained, shaped in vaguely humanoid forms . . . like permanent shadows of the fallen.

  “You’re right. You said they may already be here,” Jora’h said. “Your people can fight them if they are strong,” she said. Jora’h looked uncertain, but she wouldn’t back down; she pressed him again. “And they will be strong if you tell them to be strong. They’ll be hopeful if you tell them to be hopeful.”

  “Yes, I can tell them that.” He squared his shoulders and stood tall and strong—the powerful Mage-Imperator she had fallen in love with so many years ago. “I can tell them that, and they may even believe it.” Then his voice dropped. “But the darkness is still closing in.”

  ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-EIGHT

  GARRISON REEVES

  Even from a distance, Garrison could see that Orli was very near death from the ravages of the alien plague that had killed the rest of his clan. Aelin’s suggestion for a miracle cure seemed ridiculous, but Orli obviously needed a miracle.

  After Orli plunged through the bloater membrane as the green priest had directed, her compy detached the Proud Mary and flew it to a safe distance above the ekti-extraction operations. Garrison anxiously watched for some kind of signal from the dying woman. He could sense that no one really expected her to survive, though Aelin smiled with eager fascination. Garrison wished he had the same confidence.

  He wanted to go retrieve her himself, but Lee Iswander sent Alec Pannebaker instead. Pannebaker flew the inspection pod over to the drifting nodule. He arrived just as a thin, spacesuited form pulled herself back out through the bloater wall similar to a child being born, then floated like driftwood in the vacuum.

  Pannebaker transmitted, “I’ll fetch her—and I just saw her move. Hard to believe, but she’s still alive!”

  Garrison’s heart skipped a beat.

  Then, unexpectedly, the Proud Mary exploded. The fireball expanded, flared brighter, and vanished. All traces of the plague-ridden ship were gone.

  Seth began to cry. “DD was aboard!”

  Garrison put his arm around his son’s shoulder, sad for the loss of the compy, though he could not tear his gaze away from Orli’s rescue. His joy at learning she was still alive was entirely out of proportion given that he barely knew her.

  Pannebaker snagged the spacesuited form with the pod’s manipulator arms, spun the vessel, and raced back to the cluster of modules. “What are your instructions, Chief? We still have to follow quarantine measures.”

  “That will not be necessary,” Aelin said. “She is cleansed, healthy . . . restored. The plague will be gone from her.” His eyes had a strange sheen of utter conviction like a fanatic. Unfortunately, fanatics could be wrong.

  “We’re not taking any chances,” Iswander said. “Set up an isolated module so that we can observe her. We’ll keep her completely separate from any other workers until we can confirm that all signs of the disease are gone.”

  “We need to be quick about it, Chief,” Pannebaker replied. “I don’t dare take her aboard my pod, and she’s got limited air in her suit.”

  Iswander ordered a small group of workers to move out of a new habitation module, which was then sealed off. Pannebaker raced the pod to the designated hatch and deposited Orli’s suited form in the makeshift quarantine module.

  “She’ll be all alone,” Garrison said. “She’ll have to take care of herself.”

  “She was doing that already,” Iswander pointed out.

  Just then the station’s comm received a faint signal. “Per the instructions of my master, Orli Covitz, I am requesting a retrieval. I am just drifting in space. If anyone is listening, I would sincerely appreciate your assistance.”

  Seth brightened and looked at his father. “DD’s still alive!”

  The compy continued. “Before self-destructing the Proud Mary, I subjected my body to four full levels of decontamination. Now after several hours in hard vacuum, I am confident that all traces of the microorganism have been destroyed.” The compy paused. “I will understand, however, if you still wish to disintegrate me. Just to be certain.”

  “No!” Seth cried.

  Pannebaker was still out in his inspection pod. “What do you want me to do, Chief?”

  Iswander looked at Elisa, then at Seth. “Bring the compy back and put him in quarantine with the woman.”

  Pannebaker sped off to pick up DD.

  Once inside the newly evacuated module, Orli removed her helmet and heaved great breaths. She wore an astonished, disbelieving look—and Garrison immediately saw on the screen that her face was free of the discolorations and blemishes that had been so prominent before. Stripping out of her environment suit, Orli looked drained but strangely rejuvenated. Her shipclothes were drenched with perspiration.

  Inside the admin module, Aelin beamed. “I told you. The blood of the cosmos purged the disease and left her fresh and whole.”

  During the next day, DD nursed her back to health. Orli was ravenous, and made a remarkable recovery.

  While in quarantine, she also spent a great deal of time face-to-face on the comm with Garrison. They talked about their lives, the chain of events that had brought them to this wasteland on the outskirts of an unnamed star system. Orli regaled him with her adventures growing up, and Garrison talked about the Retroamers and the impossible dream of rebuilding Rendezvous.

  Meanwhile, Iswander increased his ekti-extraction operations to a frenzy, worried that the shadow cloud might reappear at any time. His workers had already drained two-thirds of the bloaters, filling numerous surplus silos with stardrive fuel to be sold through their new arrangement with Kett Shipping. Meanwhile, the cluster floated closer to the bright white star.

  After the regular crew, including Elisa, went back to work, Garrison had more time alone with Orli, face-to-face on the screen. Iswander still didn’t want to risk direct exposure. She talked about Matthew and how her life path had not gone the direction she expected. Hesitantly, Garrison talked about Elisa and said the same thing. And they talked about nothing at all.

  He wanted to know Orli. He had so many questions for her, about her. Despite her ordeal, she appeared strengthened by it. She seemed lost—not aimless, but searching—and glad to have him to talk to.

  Garrison realized he was in a similar situation. Ever since the Shana Rei’s inexplicable withdrawal f
rom the bloater field, followed by Orli’s unexpected arrival in the plague ship, he had set aside the questions of where he and Seth should go—or if they should go.

  When at last even the most skeptical doctor agreed that Orli was cured, that all symptoms were gone, that her blood tests were negative, and that she and the compy posed no further threat, Garrison was allowed to go into the module. He had Seth remain outside, and safe, for now.

  It was their first meeting in person, although Garrison felt as if he had known her for a long time. Inside the quiet module, he came forward and gave Orli a hug. Oddly, he felt closer to her than he’d felt to Elisa in a long time.

  Aelin joined them, eager to share his experience. Orli seemed energetic and alert now, but she did not have the intense euphoria that the green priest exhibited after his exposure. “The conduit of telink allowed me to receive so much more,” he said, sounding disappointed. “All the glory and wonder were not available to you. I knew it wouldn’t be the same, and I’m sorry for you.”

  Orli did not seem disturbed, however. “I’m alive, thanks to you. I never expected that to happen. That’s all I could ask for.”

  Her attention, though, was on Garrison. “I thought about what you said—about the importance of my work with the compies. The Spiral Arm has plenty of traders and spaceship pilots, but not everyone can do what I do. I should have focused my efforts and skills on doing what I do best . . . my skills, not just as a shadow of Matthew’s.”

  DD piped up, “That is my opinion as well. Most of the compies we distributed from Relleker have been transferred to a new colony on Ikbir.”

  “Never heard of the place,” Garrison said. “What’s it like?”

  Orli flushed. “I have no idea.”

  He laughed. “Sounds like a well-considered plan then.”

  “We could go there,” DD said. “I am sure they’d be glad to have her. Orli Covitz is a very useful person. And she can continue her work there.”