CHAPTER.

116.

GARRISON REEVES.

The shadow cloud swelled near the Iswander ekti-extraction complex like smoke ripping through the fabric of space. Utterly silent, the black nebula reached toward the cluster of bloaters.

Lee Iswander's face was markedly pale when he turned to Garrison. "I didn't listen to your warnings at Sheol-I hesitated too long before I evacuated. I won't make that mistake again." He turned to the frightened-looking techs at the admin stations. "Signal our operations to evacuate immediately. All ships out of there! Follow emergency procedures."

Elisa was angry. "We can't give up without a fight, sir. You banked everything on this. It is your chance-"

"No, Elisa. We'll pick up the pieces later." He raised his voice, transmitted over the open channel, "All work crews, find the nearest escape vessel and get away from that cloud."

The intercom echoed with distress calls, confused shouts. Evacuation alarms rattled through the connected modules. Ships at docking hatches and in landing bays were quickly crowded with people and launched out into the open, heading away from the bloater-extraction fields in every direction.

Alec Pannebaker called from the industrial yards, "But, Chief, this ekti hauler is fully loaded. I'm taking it up and out of here. That way, we'll salvage something at least."

"Only if you can do it safely. The facilities can be replaced-and we know there are other bloater clusters." He turned to his wife and son. "I will not lose personnel again. Fifteen forty-three ... that was enough."

Garrison was relieved. "Thank you, sir. Seth, come with me to the ship. We'll get as many aboard as possible. Mr. Iswander, we have room for your wife and son. Elisa, are you coming?"

Elisa placed herself at the doorway. "You're not taking Seth away from me again."

"I'm not taking him away from you. There's no time for your nonsense. We're getting out of here. You're welcome to come with us."

Iswander surprised him by interjecting in a firm, commanding tone, "Elisa, I need you to cooperate. Go with Mr. Reeves and your son, see that my family gets to safety."

She blinked, taken aback that he would side against her. She rallied visibly, then turned to Iswander. "Yes, sir. You need to leave, too."

He shook his head. "No. I'm staying here to wrap up. I can get away in my own cruiser, but I don't want to worry about you. Mr. Reeves, thank you for your offer to take a few extra passengers. I am indebted to you."

Arden said, "No. You have to come with us!"

Iswander frowned. "I have other responsibilities first, and your duty is to do as you're told."

Nodding to the industrialist, Garrison put a hand on his son's shoulder and said, "Come on, everyone, let's go!"

Elisa hesitated. Iswander said to her, "Leave! That is an order."

The huge refinery vessels were gathering momentum, lumbering away from the bloater cluster. One panicked cargo ship accelerated blindly, slammed into a group of deflated bloater sacks, and exploded.

Around the extraction field, ships flew about like enraged insects from a stirred-up hive. Another evacuating ekti hauler had raced off without securing its cargo, and the heavy tanks of stardrive fuel tumbled out, spoiling the vessel's weight distribution and sending it into a spin, which ejected even more ekti canisters. They spread out like unaimed projectiles, and one struck a small ship flying away from an extraction station that was still connected to a flaccid bloater. The tank exploded, ripping open the fleeing ship.

As he ran into the landing bay where the Prodigal Son waited, Garrison saw the explosion and expected the shock wave to ignite the bloater, which would cause another chain-reaction explosion ... but they got lucky. The deflated sack did not catch fire.

Elisa grabbed Seth's hand and hurried him into the Prodigal Son. When Londa and Arden were also safely aboard, Garrison headed for the cockpit while the others strapped in. In less than a minute, he had primed the engines and launched from the bay into the dubious safety of open space.

CHAPTER.

117.

AELIN.

With emergency evacuation alarms hammering through the Iswander complex, the green priest prepared his escape. Aelin didn't know what was happening out there, nor did he care. Everything else was insignificant to what he knew now.

The song of the cosmos continued to play in his head, deafening him with blinding colors, filling the backs of his eyes with incomprehensible words. He tasted music at the back of his tongue.

Ever since being exposed to the revelatory bloater flash, Aelin had felt the surreal symphony inside his mind. He never wanted it to stop, and his heart ached to know that he had dipped only a single droplet out of an infinite ocean.

How he wished he could have shared this with his poor brother....

Since his rescue, he had been comatose off and on, but Aelin did not mind. While unconscious and drifting, he found that he was able to bask in all the wonders that filled his head. When he woke, though, he felt dull and stupid, his perceptions fuzzy, his vision limited. His treeling was dead-withered by the overload of the flash-but the mind that now encompassed him was orders of magnitude greater than even the verdani.

He had come back to himself in the Iswander Industries medical center, swimming up through the murk of sedatives that the doctors gave him, only to find that the modular station was in the midst of a turbulent evacuation. Frantic people rushed through the corridors. A crewman ran by, shouting into the doorway, "Another ship leaves in two minutes. Better be gone before the shadow kills us all!"

In the adjoining room, two doctors were helping an injured ekti worker who had suffered a mishap at one of the pumping stations. One of the doctors looked up at him. "Good, you're awake-prepare to evacuate!" He quick-released the unnecessary restraints that had held Aelin down. "You'll have to walk on your own. Hurry!"

People scurried toward evacuation hatches and landing bays. The doctors guided the other patient into the corridor, and Aelin eased himself out of his infirmary bed. He felt weak, as if his muscles had forgotten how to function.

But he didn't want to evacuate-in fact, he had no intention of leaving the bloaters. He had a plan.

Aelin made his way to a small garment closet, unfolded the door, and slipped inside, closing it behind him. Several minutes later the doctors returned, looking for him. "Where the hell did the green priest go?"

"Everybody's evacuating. Somebody must have taken him." Grumbling, the doctors left.

Aelin let out a long sigh. Evacuation alarms continued, but by now most of the people had departed from the station.

He emerged from the closet and tore off his loose infirmary gown. He was a green priest; he needed no clothing other than his traditional loincloth. He worked his way through the well-lit corridors, creeping along, ready to hide if he heard someone coming. The station seemed empty.

In the loading bay, Aelin found one of the inspection pods still sitting there. The small ship was too slow for anyone to use it for escape, but it suited him just fine. He did not wish to get away. Whatever the crisis might be, it did not interest him.

With his mind so vast and open, it took him considerable effort to limit his thoughts to mundane matters, such as operating the controls of the pod. This was important. He felt the pull of that presence out there.

As the inspection pod drifted away from the station, he saw the ominous shadow cloud looming above the extraction operations like a cosmic thunderstorm. Iswander ships rushed everywhere, scrambling for safety. With his newfound sensitivity, Aelin could sense the angry chaos of the Shana Rei, but the bloaters beckoned him.

He flew out into the emptiness.

CHAPTER.

118.

OSIRA'H After the attack in the archives, Prince Reyn and his parents were kept in secure quarters as the King and Queen prepared to depart for Theroc. Osira'h would travel with them to the supposed safety of the worldforest planet, although she suspected the Shana Rei could reach wherever they liked. She could not forget the shadowy blankness in those possessed Ildirans who had tried to kill them in the Vault of Failures....

Gale'nh was also distraught about the incident. "I should have felt it," he told her, hanging his head. "I watched the black nebula engulf the Kolpraxa-but this type of darkness strikes through the thism, as it did on our mother's birthday. Yet I was unprepared. It can take hold of anyone, anywhere."

"But you resisted it," she pointed out as they walked toward Rod'h's quarters in the Prism Palace. "Maybe I can, too. Maybe all of the halfbreeds can."

Because she would be departing for Theroc in a day, she wanted to say goodbye to her siblings. As she and Gale'nh approached the closed door to Rod'h's chamber, though, Osira'h felt a thrum of pain like a dagger jab. It came from Rod'h.

Gale'nh felt it as well. He pushed forward and hurled open the chamber door, prepared to fight, ready to save his brother.

Startled by the interruption, Rod'h yanked his hand away from the open flames in a bowl of contained fire. His eyes sparkled with a sheen of pain. Embarrassed, he snapped, "You shouldn't have interrupted me. I nearly succeeded!" He stared at his burned hand, then held it close to his chest.

Osira'h ran to him, reaching for his arm. When he resisted, she tugged harder, pulling his hand toward her so she could look at the blisters on his palm. "You held your hand in the fire!" The reflectorized bowl continued to shimmer as flames ate at the fuel crystals, building higher with intense white fire.

Rod'h was defensive. "The faeros are out there, but they don't care. I was using the fire to call them, to demand that they listen to me. I needed to feel it burn."

Osira'h suddenly understood and chided him. "The faeros listen because they wish to-not because you inflict pain on yourself."

Rod'h shook his head. "I know the story of Mage-Imperator Xiba'h. He went into the center of Mijistra, stood before his people, doused himself with fuel-then ignited his body, burned his flesh from his bones. And that was enough." Rod'h clenched his fist, ignoring the pain. "It was enough!" He closed his eyes and turned away from the bowl of bright fire. "I need to do something! Why do I have these powers if not to use them? Why was I born?"

Osira'h was guarded. "The faeros are capricious. I have communicated with them, in a fashion ... but they also destroyed many of our worlds. They leveled Mijistra. Do not be so eager to rouse them."

"Unless there is no other way," Gale'nh said.

He stood fixated, staring at the bowl of fire. He extended his hand toward the bright white flames, hesitant at first and then steady. Reaching his fingers into the fire, he touched the heart of the fuel crystals.

As soon as Gale'nh touched them, the flames went out.

He lifted his hand away, flexed the fingers. "We may need more than fire this time."

Alone in her quarters, having packed for her trip to Theroc, Osira'h sat meditating. She had lit a small bowl of fuel crystals. The flames were tiny, flickering fingers.

Even after the end of the Elemental War, she had been among the faeros, had felt their volatile thoughts, incomprehensible emotions of joy and energy, of rage and defeat. Osira'h knew the fiery elementals were afraid of her, and furious with her, but considered her different, an intriguing anomaly.

Could she call them? Maybe they would listen-but only if they wanted to. She had to make them want to. She had to make them notice her.

She reached into the bright flame and touched the fire. She flinched from the pain, yanked her fingers back. The white flames danced as if laughing at her.

She forced her fingers into the fire again, reaching out with her mind. Far away, she felt the faeros, sensed them stir. At the back of her thoughts she held the awful echoing image of Mage-Imperator Xiba'h standing in his own pyre.

Osira'h kept her hand in the fire for as long as she could endure the burn, then yanked it away. In a distant part of her mind she felt a tremor, a surge of bright heat. The faeros had noticed her.

CHAPTER.

119.

LEE ISWANDER.

The horrific shadow cloud loomed over the extraction field, the harvesting equipment, the bloaters, and their deflated husks. Black hexagonal ships emerged and were joined by another squad of ominous vessels: Klikiss robot ships!

Alone in the admin module, Lee Iswander transmitted over the main comm, "All ships head down into the star system and regroup." He remembered those last hours on Sheol, when he had been unable to save his people at the lava-processing facility. Here, instead of being surrounded by magma plumes and thermal spikes, his operations were in the cold dark of space-and the shadow cloud was the coldest and darkest of all.

Iswander clenched his jaw. This time, he would make certain his people got away. He had no room in his conscience for further blame. The Sheol disaster had been caused by bad luck, overconfidence, and poor planning. Here, though-how could he ever have planned for the Shana Rei and the Klikiss robots?

Outside, Alec Pannebaker drove a bulky cargo ship filled with ekti cylinders. He accelerated at full power, but the load was so massive he gained little speed. An obvious target, he seemed to be daring the Shana Rei to notice him. Pannebaker headed up and away from the bloaters, trying to outrun the shadow cloud. Over the comm, he let out a whoop of triumph, as if he did this sort of thing for fun.

As the robot ships blasted at the evacuating ships, Iswander watched the bloaters, holding his breath. He had seen images of how Elisa "accidentally" ignited the ekti-filled bags in the first cluster-with disastrous consequences. Knowing how volatile the bloaters were, Iswander had taken tremendous precautions, providing shielding and insulation to dampen any ignition source in the ekti-extraction field. Still one stray spark could cause another chain-reaction explosion.

Iswander narrowed his eyes. Maybe that's what he needed.

The extraction yard was not a military installation, and he could not fight an enemy that had trounced the CDF and the Solar Navy, a dark force so terrible that it could crush an entire planetoid. But with the explosive bloaters ... Once his people got to a safe distance, maybe Iswander could fire a shot to ignite the remaining bloaters. It was the only defensive possibility he could think of. That might be sufficient to scatter the black robot attackers, repel the shadow cloud.

Maybe, just maybe, his admin module was far enough away to survive the shock wave. But not likely ...

As he tensed, running the options through his mind, debating how much he was willing to risk and how valuable the sacrifice would be, Iswander saw a tiny inspection pod leave the admin module. And the pod was flying toward the bloaters, where it would surely be engulfed by the blast.

By now all personnel should have been evacuated. "Damm it!" Fifteen hundred forty-three was more than enough ... and he had already lost some people in this mad scramble of an evacuation. He was rapidly losing his chance to inflict damage on the shadow cloud and the robot ships, though. He had to decide.

It was going to be a debacle either way.

Just then, the shadow cloud clenched and began to change.

CHAPTER.

120.