Blood of the Cosmos

 

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About the Author

Copyright Page

 

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For more than eighteen years, Louis Moesta was a proofer and trusted test reader on all my novel manuscripts. My wife's father was a former English teacher, science-fiction fan (long before it was mainstream), world traveler, and extremely interesting man.

Over the years, he offered countless insightful suggestions on my plots, characters, and prose. (I don't think he ever met a sentence that couldn't use an extra comma or two, though.…) He recently passed away at age eighty-nine.
Blood of the Cosmos
is the last novel manuscript of mine that he read.

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My special thanks for all the help, advice, and assistance I received in writing
Blood of the Cosmos
: Karen Haag for actually keeping up with me in transcribing well over a hundred chapters; Diane Jones and Louis Moesta for being first readers; my editor, Pat LoBrutto; my agent, John Silbersack; and, as always, my wife, Rebecca Moesta.

 

THE STORY SO FAR

Two decades have passed since the end of the Elemental War, the terrible conflict that raged across the Spiral Arm, devastated the alien Ildiran Empire, and tore apart the Terran Hanseatic League. The defeated hydrogues have retreated into their gas-giant planets; the fiery faeros have withdrawn into their stars and cause no further mayhem; the watery wentals have lost most of their power and are quiescent in ice planets and ocean worlds. Only the verdani, the sentient worldtrees on the forest planet Theroc, remain active, communicating through their green priest representatives. The humans and Ildirans have had twenty years to rebuild and recover. King Peter and Queen Estarra rule the new Confederation, a union of human colonies as well as the gypsy Roamer clans.

Mage-Imperator Jora'h, leader of the Ildiran Empire, announces a new initiative to explore beyond the populated worlds of the Spiral Arm, which will be spearheaded by a new ship, the
Kolpraxa
. Commanding this expedition is Tal Gale'nh, a talented young halfbreed officer of the Ildiran Solar Navy, prot
é
g
é
of Adar Zan'nh and the son of the Mage-Imperator's consort, the green priest Nira. Gale'nh is one of Nira's five halfbreed children, the result of an illicit breeding program; the others are her daughter Osira'h (fathered by Jora'h himself; her special abilities to control the hydrogues and faeros were a key weapon that saved the Ildiran Empire during the Elemental War); Rod'h (fathered by the hated Dobro Designate, the second most powerful of her children, who was never called upon to do his duty because Osira'h succeeded in his stead); Tamo'l (fathered by a lens kithman philosopher); and Muree'n (fathered by a warrior).

The
Kolpraxa
ventures into the unexplored spaces beyond the Spiral Arm, while some of the crew are concerned about the Shana Rei, supposedly mythical creatures of darkness that oppressed the Ildiran Empire long ago. The human historian Anton Colicos earlier proved that the Shana Rei were mere fiction, bogeymen used to cover up other events in Ildiran history, but after the uproar caused by that shocking revelation, Colicos discovered other records that show the Shana Rei may have been real after all. This knowledge is heavy on the minds of the
Kolpraxa
's crew as they encounter a mysterious dark nebula that seems to be growing. As they approach to investigate, the shadow cloud expands and engulfs the ship, cutting them off entirely.

Back in the Ildiran Empire, Gale'nh's siblings sense that something has happened to their brother. Osira'h, at an astronomy station near an active star, is studying the surviving faeros that flit about in the churning stellar layers; Rod'h is in the Ildiran capital, clashing with Jora'h and Nira as he tries to erase the shame of his father's hidden breeding program; Tamo'l is on the ocean world of Kuivahr, running a medical sanctuary for a group of surviving “misbreeds,” malformed mistakes left over from the breeding program; and Muree'n is testing her fighting abilities with the female warrior Yazra'h. With their halfbreed connection to Gale'nh, they know that the
Kolpraxa
is lost.

In the Confederation, the Roamer industrialist Lee Iswander runs a risky but profitable metals-processing operation on the lava planet Sheol. Roamers are known for living on the edge and doing the impossible, but many of the clans are uneasy about Iswander, whose hard business attitude is at odds with the more close-knit and casual behavior of the clans. One of Iswander's workers, Garrison Reeves, believes the Sheol operations are unstable due to orbital changes, but Iswander dismisses the concerns. Garrison's hard-edged wife Elisa is Iswander's deputy, and she sides with the industrialist, angry that her husband is causing difficulties in her job. Convinced of the danger, Garrison steals a ship and flees Sheol with their son Seth. Outraged and betrayed, Elisa asks permission from Iswander to pursue them, and he agrees. She flies after them.

Iswander, meanwhile, wants to be the next Speaker of the Roamer clans. He thinks the scruffy gypsies need to be brought into the modern era of business. He goes to the Roamer seat of government, a space habitat called Newstation, to make his case. Iswander is by far the most qualified person for the Speaker job, and his own rival is a glad-handing loser, Sam Ricks. Iswander's real nemesis among the clans, however, is Olaf Reeves—Garrison's stern, hard-line father, who insists the clans should return to the old ways. Olaf's followers even refuse to accept Newstation as the Roamer capital, but instead devote themselves to a hopeless dream of rebuilding the old, destroyed Roamer center of Rendezvous. After a fierce debate, the disgusted Olaf withdraws his clan's children from the Roamer school of Academ, saying they will depart for deep space, where they have found a new home, a derelict city where they can be left alone.

Garrison flies out into unexplored space with his son, where they come upon a cluster of organic drifting nodules, huge gas bags, like space plankton. Seth names them “bloaters.” They hide there, but a furious Elisa tracks them down, charges into the bloater cluster; she rails at Garrison for kidnapping their son and, when he tries to escape, she takes a potshot at him. The shot goes wild and strikes one of the bloaters—triggering an astonishing chain-reaction explosion that rips through the entire cluster. Garrison and Elisa barely survive, but each thinks the other was destroyed.

Back on Sheol, Garrison's worst fears are coming true: the lava operations are unstable. Iswander returns from Newstation to meet the trader Rlinda Kett and her two deputies, Tasia Tamblyn and Robb Brindle, who have arrived to pick up a shipment. The operations begin to collapse, and the workers frantically try to evacuate, but it is a complete disaster. Rlinda Kett manages to rescue many, including Iswander, but 1,543 people die. In disgrace, Iswander returns to Newstation, where he loses the election for Speaker to the incompetent Sam Ricks. He has also lost his fortune and his reputation, and in shame he takes his family back to the ruins of Sheol to lie low. That is where Elisa finds him after she limps home from the bloater explosion. All seems lost, but Elisa reports an unexpected opportunity that could save clan Iswander: those bloaters are filled with
stardrive fuel
. No one else knows it. If Iswander could find more bloaters, he would quickly rebuild his fortune.

Meanwhile, Zhett Kellum and her husband Patrick Fitzpatrick run a traditional Roamer skymine that harvests stardrive fuel from the gas giant Golgen. Their daughter Shareen, a genius in the making, has gone off to a special school on Earth, where she is miserable, and she wants to come back to the family skymine. Zhett's father, Del Kellum—a former clan Speaker—has retired and built a distillery to process the exotic kelp strains on the Ildiran sanctuary world of Kuivahr, where Tamo'l has established her refuge for the misbreeds. The kelp strains also have unusual medicinal properties. A mysterious man, Tom Rom, comes through the Klikiss transportal and buys samples of the medicinal kelp from Del Kellum. Tom Rom claims that his employer, Zoe Alakis, is doing specialized research, but he departs without giving further details. Tom Rom also acquires medical records from Tamo'l about all her misbreeds.

Zoe Alakis is the owner and ruthless administrator of a private medical research facility, Pergamus, on a poisonous planet. Completely isolated, she conducts dangerous research to build a personal collection of diseases and cures. Zoe is paranoid, lives in a sterile dome. Her father died of a terrible disease, and Tom Rom has been her faithful majordomo for years; he will do anything to protect her and get her the specimens she needs.

After Tom Rom departs Kuivahr, Del Kellum goes to Golgen to visit his daughter Zhett on their skymine, where Shareen has returned from school on Earth, glad to be back above the clouds; Shareen is accompanied by her study partner, Howard Rohandas, who wants practical knowledge instead of just book learning. A great storm appears deep in the clouds, inky black shadows well up like dark blood—and gigantic hydrogue warglobes rise from the core to warn the skyminers. A smothering shadow—the Shana Rei!—has contaminated the planet and engulfed the powerful hydrogue empire. The Kellums evacuate the skymine and barely get away before the blackness poisons the entire gas giant.

On a joint military expedition on the fringes of the Ildiran Empire, Adar Zan'nh joins General Nalani Keah, commander of the Confederation Defense Forces, as they explore ice moons. They are astonished to flush out a small infestation of evil Klikiss robots, treacherous enemies thought to have been destroyed in the Elemental War. Led by Exxos, the black robots hid on the ice moon when all their comrades were wiped out in the war. Now, Exxos and his robots try to flee, pursued by General Keah and Adar Zan'nh. As the embattled robot ships race away they encounter another shadow cloud, which scrambles the technological systems of the pursuers. Seeing their only chance, the robots plunge into the shadow cloud—where they are captured by the Shana Rei, powerful and incomprehensible beings who want to unmake the universe itself. As his only way to survive, Exxos makes a bargain with the Shana Rei that he and his robots will assist in their war.