"Too risky."

Now she hardened her expression because Tom Rom needed to see her resolve. "You know me. If anything goes wrong, if there's even the slightest chance of a release, I'll vaporize it all rather than risk contamination."

He seemed amused by that. "Even with me aboard?"

"Yes, dammit! Even with you aboard. You know I will."

He let out a rattling sigh. "Yes. I know you will." She could see Tom Rom was too weak and too ill to argue, and he accepted defeat with as much grace as he could manage. "If nothing else, you'll learn quite a bit by monitoring and testing me as the disease progresses. I'll allow myself to become your specimen."

He guided his stolen courier vessel toward the necklace of research spheres that orbited above the planet. Security escort ships followed him in, unaware of what was happening. They simply believed Tom Rom carried an extremely valuable and dangerous specimen-which he did, but they didn't need any more information.

Her pulse racing, Zoe called up the records of her research teams, scanned their areas of expertise. She knew little about the alien disease, so she would put her best scientists on it. All of them. Other work on Pergamus would grind to a halt, and she didn't care.

Tom Rom continued to talk to her in his ragged voice. He transmitted a summary that he had compiled on his journey, but many of the sentences were aimless or incomplete. He had trouble focusing his thoughts, which chilled Zoe to her core. She had never known Tom Rom's mind to be anything but sharp and organized.

She couldn't lose him!

This exotic and deadly plague was a Klikiss-borne disease that had infected another, previously unknown alien race, then also spread to humans as well. It might have opportunistically shifted its genetic structure to adapt. A disease that could cross species lines was amazing and terrifying-Zoe needed to study it. In her war against the unseen world of germs and diseases, this was like a super weapon.

She understood Tom Rom's determination to get the specimen here, but she couldn't imagine how he had been so careless as to become infected. He simply did not make mistakes.

Though she struggled to remain calm, panic rose within her. Seeing him, knowing he was dying, made her feel helpless again-just as when her father was in the last stages of Heidegger's Syndrome. Adam Alakis had died because no medical research teams had bothered to devote resources to curing an obscure disease, and Zoe refused to let that happen to Tom Rom. To save him, she would devote the full resources of Pergamus: people, equipment, finances, and knowledge.

She handpicked her top doctors for the ORS 12 research team and powered up the sphere's life-support systems.

She wanted to keep talking to Tom Rom, because she didn't dare lose a second of what remained of his life. He looked as if he'd grown sicker in just the few minutes while she'd been busy making arrangements.

She said, "Do not underestimate me."

His smile was weak but genuine. "Zoe, I never underestimate you."

CHAPTER.

131.

ORLI COVITZ.

Orli didn't want to get her hopes up. Depending too much on unrealistic hope was what had made her hesitate while Tom Rom was pursuing her.

But the green priest said he had a way to cure her. On screen, Aelin wore an expression not of arrogance, but of unwavering confidence that he knew everything, even though he could only share the tiniest fraction of it.

"What have you got to lose?" asked Garrison Reeves, who looked earnest on the screen as he talked with her from the admin module.

And Orli realized that she did not in fact have anything to lose.

Though they had never spoken before, she felt a connection with Garrison. He and his son were both familiar with her compy work. And she knew something about Garrison too, having watched the sad last messages of clan Reeves, including the farewells spoken by Olaf, Dale, Sendra.

He seemed different from the Retroamers, though, an independent man who had not wanted to isolate himself from the rest of the Confederation. From his obvious compassion, she could tell he was not at all like Matthew. Orli wished she could have had a chance to know him better. It was a cruel irony to meet someone like that when she was in the last stages of a terminal disease....

DD contributed his opinion about the green priest's offer. "I encourage you to pursue any option of a cure, Orli. I would find it difficult to force you if you decided to resist-but I would still make the attempt."

Orli looked at the Friendly compy, struggled to focus her eyes. Her head pounded, every part of her felt indescribably awful. She doubted she had the energy to fight off even little DD. "Why would you force me?"

"My programming requires me to save you. I cannot allow you to come to harm through inaction-mine or yours. If you refuse to try the only possible cure, then I would not allow your inaction."

She responded with a weak, rattling laugh. "That's an interesting contortion of logic. I'd like to stay alive, even if just to study that further." She turned back to the concerned audience that watched her from Iswander's admin module. "All right, so what exactly am I supposed to do?"

The green priest said in a calm voice, "Do what I did. Go to one of the bloater nodules and pass through the membrane. Inside is the universe's primordial sea-life itself, and everything. Immerse yourself."

"I thought the bloaters were filled with ekti. Won't I just drown in stardrive fuel?"

"You will bathe in the blood of the cosmos," said the green priest. "You are not like me. You don't have telink, so the effect will not be as pronounced, but I am confident you will find the cleansing you need."

"I'm glad somebody's confident," Orli muttered.

Without being told, DD operated the piloting controls and eased the Proud Mary toward the bloater cluster. Far below, the system's bright white sun looked intense and alone. Nodules drifted toward the star, followed by the extraction ships and equipment.

Iswander Security flanked her, as if to make sure Orli didn't try to escape, but that was the farthest thing from her mind. With blurred vision, she looked at the industrial operations, the cargo ships flying about, the dark and deflated husks that drifted loose in space-and the remaining bloaters, spherical, silent, except for an occasional flash that sparkled from a nucleus.

Orli indicated a bloater that drifted outside the main mass of nodules. "Fly me to that one, DD. Get as close as you can." She still didn't really believe the green priest had a solution, but-as Garrison said-what did she have to lose?

It took her three tries to push herself out of the pilot chair. DD decreased the artificial gravity aboard so she had an easier time moving. She would need an environment suit, at least until she was submerged inside the bloater. She dreaded the effort that donning the suit would require, but she knew she had to do it.

Orli tugged on the slick fabric. She hadn't had many occasions to use a spacesuit in recent years, but the safety systems were helpful. The fastenings sealed themselves. Her left foot was maddeningly uncooperative, and she couldn't seem to get it seated properly in the integrated boot.

When DD came to offer his assistance, Orli almost wept with gratitude. Like a prim butler, he adjusted her fingers in the gloves, sealed the remaining components, repositioned her foot in the boot, then activated the suit's life-support systems.

"I have piloted the Proud Mary up against the bloater membrane," he said.

She sank down onto a bench so she was low enough for the compy to fasten her helmet. "Thank you, DD." Then it was time to go.

With weaving steps, she moved to the airlock. Through the windowports, she could see the bloater's mottled membrane so close. The thing was both intimidating and majestic. Standing at the airlock hatch, she turned back to the little compy. "Even if this works, I can't come back aboard the ship. The Proud Mary is contaminated. Nobody else can come aboard. Ever."

"I already have my instructions, Orli. I have prepared the ship's self-destruct systems." He paused and added, "BO and the other clan Reeves compies provided an example that I intend to emulate."

Orli stepped into the airlock, then turned back. "I'm modifying your instructions, DD. Once I'm inside the bloater, take the Proud Mary a safe distance from the Iswander operations and set the destruct timer. Transmit your coordinates, and then exit through the airlock into open space. You'll be adrift in hard vacuum, but someone will retrieve you soon enough."

"So, to clarify-you do not wish for me to be aboard during the self-destruct sequence?"

"No, DD, I don't wish that at all. The plague organism won't survive exposure to open space. It can't."

DD hesitated. "Are you certain?"

"Dead certain. Once they retrieve you, the industrial crew will keep you isolated and put you through every possible decontamination routine they can think of just to be sure."

"Just to be sure," DD echoed.

If nothing else, she imagined that DD could become the companion of young Seth Reeves. She was sure the boy and the Friendly compy would get along well together.

Before DD could argue with her, she closed the airlock hatch, sealed her helmet faceplate. After the air was purged and the outer airlock door opened, Orli faced the oddly gelatinous membrane of the bloater. She extended her gloved hand, touched the surface, and patted it. It felt as if the bloater were made of a kind of stiff jelly.

With a shove, she inserted her arm all the way up to the elbow. The density and texture inside eluded her, but the pain in her body did not. If she died, the plague would die with her. DD would destroy the Proud Mary as planned. But if she didn't die ...

"What have I got to lose?"

Orli ducked her head and plunged into the bloater, where she found herself drifting in an invisible, intangible embrace. Baptized in the blood of the cosmos. Orli didn't know what to do with the green priest's mysticism, but all she had left was trust and hope.

Pushing aside any vestiges of hesitation, she opened the faceplate of her helmet.

Bloater protoplasm flooded her helmet, her suit; it poured into her eyes and ears and nose. Instinctively, she drew a last breath and sucked the impossible substance into her lungs. It raced everywhere, saturating her cells.

Orli Covitz felt reborn.

CHAPTER.

132.

GENERAL NALANI KEAH.

As commander of the Confederation Defense Forces, Nalani Keah knew when the battle was lost, whether or not she wanted to admit it. But leading the CDF involved more than just numbers and analyses. She had a heart, too, and fiery passion, and she knew damn well she was never going to give up.

The roiling shadow cloud hung in space like a stain on the universe. Even though the gigantic Shana Rei cylinders did not move, they seemed to pulse out waves of chaos and disaster.

Two verdani battleships again hurled themselves against the ever-growing nightshade, but the obsidian hex plates were more than just opaque: the darkness seemed to drain life itself from the huge treeships.

And the eclipse barrier continued to drown the whole planet in darkness. The worldforest was dying.

Klikiss robot vessels streaked out from the dark nebula like attack dogs. On the Kutuzov's bridge, Keah sounded battle stations and summoned her scrappy Manta cruisers into defense formations. "The bugbots are after our asses again-let's show them what scrap metal looks like."

The rattling call to arms made the pulse pound faster, the adrenaline flow.

The black robots attacked at random points, caused whatever destruction they could, and then retreated into the shelter of the shadow cloud. The CDF had destroyed dozens of the enemy ships, but they kept coming! How many armored vessels did the damned bugbots have? Did they keep replenishing somehow?

Standard CDF weapons did little or nothing against the hexagonal plates or the Shana Rei cylinders, but at least the robots were an enemy her people could fight. It did her soldiers good to blow up a few bad guys every once in a while.

"Mr. Patton, power up the magnetic fields on our railguns. Let's get rid of some of those spare projectiles we've been hauling around."

The weapons officer grinned. "My pleasure, General."

The Kutuzov thrummed as a blizzard of high-velocity projectiles sprayed across space, turning three oncoming robot ships into metal confetti. The other enemy vessels spread out in evasive courses that-because they were robots-were not quite random enough to fool Keah's tactical team. They anticipated the paths of the robot ships and sent out another spray of projectiles.

Yes, it was good to blow up a few bad guys every once in a while.

Keah's green priest looked up from his treeling with a horror-stricken grimace on his face. "General, I think the worldforest is under attack!"

"That's old news, Mr. Nadd."

"Not the Shana Rei-it's ... faeros!"

The Kutuzov's imagers were focused on the nightshade, the Shana Rei shadow cloud, the attacking robot ships, but when the General scanned down at Theroc, she saw a cluster of shooting stars roaring toward her from below, streaks of fire like the ones that had caused horrific devastation during the Elemental War. They had hammered the worldforest, caused tremendous destruction to Ildira, and shattered the Earth's Moon into a million fragments.

"Oh, crap. I could have gone my whole day without seeing them again," she said. "All ships, prepare to defend against the faeros!"

"But ... how, General?" asked the first officer.

Good question.

Like fiery comets, the faeros hurtled out of the Theron atmosphere, leaving sooty trails behind them as they rushed toward the defensive line.

"They're coming right at us, General," yelled Tac Officer Voecks.

"Brace yourselves!" Keah said.

At his treeling, however, Nadd's expression changed from terror to confusion. "Wait, General, they're not ... attacking. Something happened down there-none of the green priests can understand it." He blinked in surprise. "Prince Reyn says the faeros are here to help."

The molten cannonballs rocketed past the CDF battleships as if they weren't there and headed straight for the gigantic nightshade blocking sunlight from Theroc.

The first two fireballs splattered against the interlocked black hexes, and the impact spread across the eclipse barrier like napalm. Even though CDF ships had been bombarding the nightshade without success for days, the faeros shattered some of the hexes. Dazzling cracks began to show between the plates, as long-blocked sunlight streamed through the gaps.

Another fireball slammed into the eclipse plate near where the weakening verdani treeships had been trying to rip it apart. The force was sufficient to dismantle a wide segment of the occultation barrier. Even more sunlight flooded through, carving a bright blade of daylight across the night-smothered planet.

In response to the unexpected threat, the black Shana Rei cylinders finally began to move. The huge battleships spilled out dozens more hex plates that twirled in to rebuild the nightshade as fast as the faeros could destroy it.

An explosion shook the Kutuzov, and Keah held on to her command chair to keep from being thrown to the deck. An attacking robot warship soared past, launching another volley of weapons at them.

"No significant damage, General."

"That'll teach me to drop my guard," she grumbled. "Now let's teach that bugbot a lesson of our own. You soldiers aren't getting paid to watch the faeros do our fighting for us-come on."

Mr. Patton wore a hard grin as he aimed the railgun launchers. He fired a projectile right up the exhaust port of the escaping robot ship, which blossomed into wreckage. The bridge crew cheered. More Manta cruisers chased after the remaining black robot ships as they scrambled back toward the shadow cloud like a child hiding behind its mother's skirts.

Her sensor chief cleared his throat. "General, this is probably the last thing you want to hear, but I'm detecting a large group of inbound ships. Are we expecting company?"

"Not unless one of my Grid Admirals is acting independently." General Keah had not called for any CDF reinforcements, which would have proved useless. "How many ships?"

Lieutenant Saliba ran a quick analysis. "Forty-nine, sir."