Blood of the Cosmos (8 page)

The black robots were advanced enough that they could grasp fragments of fear. Now, his comrades moved in a flurry, issuing a buzz of communication, and Exxos rotated himself as a darker blot opened up against the inky void, a Rorschach smear of utter darkness with an incongruous eye manifesting in the middle.

A maddening, thrumming voice issued from the Shana Rei. “The pain increases.”

Other shadows appeared around them, ragged holes of lightlessness with staring eyes. The voice was accusing. “Your plan failed at Theroc.”

Exxos said, “No—your pain makes you blind to what we accomplished. The plan succeeded, but imperfectly. The humans and Ildirans understand their imminent extinction. They are terrified of us now.”

“Yet the pain does not go away,” said the Shana Rei, adding a wordless, ripping howl of agony. The eye stared, blazing in a way that made the robot's optical sensors burn. “You must help us. You are our allies.”

Seeing the throbbing edges, Exxos knew the Shana Rei were on the verge of uncontrollable violence, and he could ill afford to lose more robots. He rapidly said what he knew the shadows wanted to hear. “We share the same goals. The robots will work with you to destroy the worldforest, destroy the Ildiran
thism
network, destroy the prison of Order. We can accomplish it—but you must give us the tools to do so. Give us more battleships, and we will take care of the rest. Let us attack the Ildirans, destroy them—ease your pain.”

“Creating battleships also causes us pain. We cannot bear it.”

Exxos insisted, “You must endure that pain so we can annihilate your enemies. It is necessary.”

He wanted to develop a methodical list of targets to obliterate, one after another after another, but because the Shana Rei hated order for its own sake, they did not value plans and intricate schemes. Exxos found it maddening to conduct a war this way.

Finally, capriciously, the pulsing inkblots agreed. “We will create ships, as you request, but your black robots must cause enough destruction to mitigate the pain of the additional molecular framework that you force us to impose upon blessed chaos.” The Shana Rei eyes continued to stare at the robots. “Destroy many targets, but remember that the Ildirans and humans are not our real enemy. Eternity's mind is awakening.”

Without further explanation, the inkblots winked out like eyes closing, leaving the robots alone, suspended, and waiting for the creatures of darkness to manifest the promised battleships that Exxos could take into war.

 

CHAPTER

9

ORLI COVITZ

The planet Ikbir was home, for now. Orli had made enough new homes in her life that she was used to putting down roots, but not deep ones.

As she had hoped, Ikbir was a calm, out-of-the-way colony, not entirely stress free—no place was—but without any major crises, at least so far. Orli was done with crises. With her string of bad luck (some might have said “adventures”) she feared she might jinx this place. She was just looking for somewhere to settle down and recover. After that, who knew?

At least she was with Garrison Reeves and his son Seth. She had grown close to both of them, which made this—brief? permanent?—stop on Ikbir more pleasant than the landscape suggested.

Orli was physically healed after nearly dying from the space plague she had contracted on the derelict Onthos city. She had expected to die alone in deep space, but she had stumbled upon the Iswander extraction yard, where she was cured, thanks to the bloaters and the green priest Aelin—and the compassionate attention of Garrison.

Thoughts of him and his son always made Orli smile. By encouraging her, giving her strength, and demanding that she not give up hope, they had saved her from the alien plague as much as Aelin's strange cure had. Now she was happy and relieved to be with them, together in a makeshift family.

Garrison stood next to her outside their small shared dwelling, and they both just listened to the wind. “I'm glad you're healthy and strong.” He raised his eyebrows. “And happy, I hope? For the time being?”

“For the time being. I really don't know if this is where I want to stay, though. I've always been a little footloose.”

He responded with a warm laugh. “You should have been a Roamer.”

Searching for a stable place, Garrison and Seth had come here with her after leaving from what was left of the Iswander extraction field. Orli wanted to check on the rehabilitated compies she had sent to Ikbir, and the colony certainly needed Garrison's skills to help keep their spaceport, ships, and equipment running. As a Roamer, he had a knack for that. It seemed a perfectly reasonable choice.

When they arrived together, the three of them had been issued a shared dwelling module, since the colonists assumed they were a family. Neither she nor Garrison went out of the way to dispel assumptions that they were a couple. And maybe they were, even though they'd been thrown together by circumstances.

Afraid to destabilize the situation, neither of them thought far ahead. Orli and Garrison had each other, and they had a good thing. Was this the beginning of a great romance? Orli had been hurt too badly, and too recently, by her husband Matthew; Garrison could say the same about Elisa Enturi, Seth's mother. Now, the two were friends and lovers, but they didn't know how much more it would turn out to be. They were still trying to figure that out. The boy seemed perfectly content to have Orli with them. They had a real affinity, and Orli rather liked her new role. She had wanted children of her own—one of the things that had been lacking in her marriage with Matthew.

Matthew had left Orli after getting his mistress pregnant, acknowledging the sad irony that he hadn't even wanted children at the time. Now, though, she had Seth, and she could experience the joy of helping him, teaching him. Not only was the boy a pleasure to be around, Seth seemed a genius in the making. And that was something she wanted to encourage.

They'd had several weeks to settle in, and Ikbir was home, even though the place was rather dull. Wind blew dust devils across the flat landscape. The planet's soil was receptive to terrestrial crops, so long as the farmers added substantial nitrogen binders. The local government was stable, intelligent, careful—just what a quiet colony demanded.

But the wind kept blowing, and Orli always had dust in her eyes. With her light brown hair constantly whipped about, she resigned herself to a short haircut that looked like a mop. Garrison said he didn't mind her new look.

“I'll make us dinner again tonight,” he offered.

She gave him a small smile. “So you can continue to practice your cooking?”

“Of course, and also because I enjoy your company.”

Garrison was handsome, in his early thirties, with brown hair and a patience that bordered on persistence. Orli could sense a sadness about him, though. He'd had a falling-out with his Roamer clan, butted heads with his stern and overbearing father, Olaf Reeves, and the last split had been more bitter than ever. Leaving him, clan Reeves had gone to settle the derelict Onthos city … where they all died, every one of them, from the same plague that had nearly killed Orli. Garrison didn't know how to deal with his guilt—if he
had
rejoined his clan, as he had tried to do, then he and Seth would also be dead.

Now on plain and empty Ikbir, Orli didn't ask him questions when they held each other, sharing and drawing strength. They each carried loss and hurt and regret inside of themselves. But maybe they could forge their way forward together.

After giving her a quick kiss, then pausing to give her a longer one, Garrison headed off to his job monitoring cultivation equipment, which the colony sorely needed. The Ikbir settlers planted acres of various crops, still trying to determine which species grew best here, but as mechanics and engineers, they did not know how to think outside of the box, so Garrison had a lot of repairs to do. Since they had no green priest and supply runs came so rarely, Ikbir had to be self-sufficient.

Back when Orli had managed the compy rehabilitation center on Relleker, she had sent numerous reprogrammed compies here to help with the colony; in fact, that was how she had known of Ikbir in the first place. Now, one of her jobs was to maintain those compies. Orli headed into the town so she could check in with her compies. So far, they all performed admirably.

Ikbir's main town was an ever-expanding grid of prefabs, all of which had been identical out of the kit, but the settlers added homey touches. Some sported flower beds or wind catchers, others were painted bright colors. LU, a Friendly-model compy, had been assigned to work in the general store. LU was so good at helping the customers that the store manager found he could take time outside with an easel and watercolors, provided the wind wasn't strong enough to blow everything away.

The Domestic compy MO was in much demand, cleaning houses for the colonists. She was a one-compy cleaning brigade, though perhaps too obsessive about her work. Some of Orli's other rehabilitated compies did civic maintenance, worked on water-purification plants, installed and maintained power blocks in the admin buildings. Other compies worked the agricultural acreage.

Her own Friendly compy, DD, was special, and Orli didn't think she would ever give her companion to someone else. DD had been with her most of her life, surviving as many ordeals as she had, but Seth was establishing a clear bond with him. The boy had always been fond of compies, and he had made few other friends here. There were other children on Ikbir, but these backwater colonists had very few interests in common with him.

Though he was only eleven, Seth had visited numerous star systems, lived in extreme environments, gone to the Roamer capital of Newstation. Only a few of these Ikbir colonists had ever been more than fifty kilometers from home … which didn't matter much, since the landscape looked the same for more than fifty kilometers in all directions. Most of the children were home-schooled, some taught in groups, but Seth asked too many questions of the teachers, which got him in trouble. He made no secret of how much he wanted to go back to the Roamer school at Academ.

Orli knew that Garrison was also having second thoughts about settling here. They had escaped their immediate emergency from Orli's sickness and the Shana Rei attack on the Iswander complex. Though they had been here only a few weeks, it might be time to move on.

As she walked to her small office in town, she spotted DD coming down the streets with Seth in tow. As the two approached, she could see that DD was dust-smeared and Seth had scratches all over his arms and face. His clothes were torn. She hurried out to intercept them. “What happened to you two?” With great concern, she brushed the boy's hair, checked for greater injuries.

He seemed embarrassed. “Nothing much. I'm fine.”

DD answered, “We discovered some native thorn plants that whispered in the wind. Seth wanted to investigate whether those plants might be related to the Whistlers on Eljiid, which we studied in one of our lessons.”

“I wanted to hear the music, maybe sense their thoughts.” Seth sounded disappointed. “But I got stuck deep in the thicket. The hooked spines caught on my skin and my shirt. I think they attacked me on purpose.”

DD said, “I found no indication that these plants were sentient. I extracted him. I do not believe he is injured, although he may need minor medical attention.”

None of the scratches and scuffs looked deep, but Orli led the boy toward the town's infirmary nevertheless. She saw that DD could use a hosing off and a polishing, as well. “Come on. We'll get this done, quick and easy—don't worry.” Taking care of the boy seemed so natural to her.

Seth looked concerned. “Do you think my dad will be upset with me?”

After running her fingers along the deepest scratch, which had already stopped bleeding, she remembered the other ordeals the four of them had been through. Orli couldn't help but smile as she led Seth to the first-aid center. “Oh, we've all survived worse. A lot worse.”

 

CHAPTER

10

TOM ROM

The people on Dhougal were doomed, and Tom Rom knew it. Those who hadn't already succumbed to the deadly brain parasite would be dead within days. Most of the inhabitants on the secluded island knew their fates, and the ones who weren't aware lay screaming in dementia as the alien nematodes reproduced and devoured their cerebral cortices.

Getting a sample of the deadly organism would be a challenge. He would have to be careful, and he didn't have much time. He needed to slip through the quarantine line and infiltrate the charnel-house colony before all the specimens died—and before the planetary sterilization squad nuked the entire island.

It would be a close thing. Tom Rom found it exhilarating. He was so glad to be back on the job, happy to do what he was meant to do—for Zoe Alakis.

Any rational government would have vaporized the island days ago, but fortunately (for him) bleeding hearts on the planetary council had pleaded for compassion for “those poor people,” as if some cure would miraculously appear out of thin air.

But even the vast plague database on Pergamus had no treatments for this particularly lethal and virulent brain parasite, which made the tiny nematodes all the more desirable to his employer. Zoe wanted them for her collection, and Tom Rom never let her down.

The Dhougal colony on Serenity's Reach was located on a lush and pristine tropical island only ten kilometers offshore from the more populated continent. Preparing himself for the mission, Tom Rom had read the history of the place, and he knew that the small breakaway group—106 colonists—had moved from the mainland with the intent of forming an island utopia.

Reading this, Tom Rom had rolled his eyes. Even though such attempts always failed,
always
, that didn't deter optimistic people from trying. At least in this instance the dream had not been brought down by human failings; the dreamers simply hadn't been prepared for the rare brain parasite native to the island.