ROD’H
When the shadow cloud tore a hole in space, Rod’h’s scout ship was hidden among the branches of the immense verdani battleship. While the Solar Navy warliners sounded alarms, and the Adar called soldiers to their battle stations, the CDF Kutuzov plunged forward, recklessly attacking the Shana Rei hex ships.
Left behind, Rod’h kept working his scout ship through the dangerous maze of twisted, armored boughs, taking shelter. Tal Gale’nh sent an urgent tight-beam message to him. “Stay there and stay safe, brother. I will return for you when I can.”
Rod’h’s scout ship dodged through the obstacles of the gigantic treeship. He had been exploring the twisted relic for hours and now wended his way deeper into the thorny labyrinth. He knew he would need half an hour to emerge from the petrified thicket.
By that time, the entire battle might be over.
He gritted his teeth, eager to be in the command nucleus beside his half-brother, while they fought the enemy. Tal Gale’nh had already faced the Shana Rei, but Rod’h believed himself to be even stronger. Together, they would surely be formidable against the shadows.
Yet he was abandoned here. “Wait, I can help you!” he transmitted, but Gale’nh’s warliner was already careening toward the pulsing shadow cloud, along with the rest of the septa. The CDF and Solar Navy ships opened fire with a fusillade of laser cannons, which disintegrated parts of the black hex vessels.
From inside his scout ship, Rod’h monitored the battle with long-range sensors, but the images writhed and sharpened again as random entropy waves disturbed his systems. His nav computer flickered, and one of the engines dropped to half thrust. Rod’h struggled to stabilize the tumbling scout ship, but his controls were sluggish.
His craft careened into one of the armored branches, and a verdani thorn tore his second starboard engine, making the craft shudder. Sparks flew into space, and spilled fuel vented into the vacuum. Damage reports scrolled across his control screens, and an automated distress beacon pealed out, but Rod’h knew none of the Solar Navy vessels would come to rescue a lone person.
Using sensor enhancements, he occasionally succeeded in breaking through the static. He saw a brief, clear image of the big warships battling the Shana Rei. A giant Solar Navy warliner tumbled, seemingly lifeless, though it did not look damaged, simply deactivated—perhaps knocked out by the full force of a Shana Rei entropy blast. He hoped it was not Gale’nh’s vessel.
When the CDF Juggernaut and the other warliners launched their sun bombs, the multiple detonations overlapped like exploding stars that rippled out, multiplying, washing out Rod’h’s view. He shielded his eyes from the glare just in time, which saved him from being blinded, but the intense pulse overloaded the scout ship’s systems. Though he tried several times, he could not restart his engines, and he drifted aimlessly. With a long slow screech, the ship scraped against a verdani branch, but the momentum was not enough to split open the hull. The distress beacon kept pulsing, grating on his nerves.
Shock waves from the distant sun bomb explosions swept over the unprotected verdani battleship. Outer branches splintered away and drifted like frozen meteor shards above the endless gulf of the Dyson sphere below.
Rod’h worked the cockpit controls, determined to restart the engines, but he was not an expert mechanic. There had always been engineer kith to fix any damaged systems. Nevertheless, he tried to bypass the damaged components himself.
A swarm of angular robot ships erupted from the hex cylinders and stormed in to engage the Solar Navy. The sun bombs had clearly hurt the Shana Rei, and now their hexagonal vessels were stubbier, physically diminished.
But the robot battleships attacked in a chaotic, destructive fury. They soared in, weapons blazing. Rod’h watched them target the helpless drifting warliner whose shields were down, weapons deactivated. And the Ildiran ship was blasted to debris.
Meanwhile, the shadow cloud skated across empty space, making its way toward the Dyson sphere. As it approached the black shell, the shadow cloud blossomed, swelled, as if it intended to draw a dark energy from the material contained there.
Rod’h’s comm system flickered back on, and he heard a cacophony of conflicting orders, distress signals, damage reports. In addition to the warliner that had been destroyed, two severely damaged ones tried to limp away from the battlefield. Rod’h was relieved to hear Gale’nh’s voice, still shouting orders, driving his warliner in to continue attacking the robot vessels.
Adar Zan’nh and General Keah issued conflicting commands as the surviving warships continued their free-for-all, but they were battered by the unexpected ferocity of the black robots.
Above the Dyson sphere, the shadow cloud extended a hazy pseudopod, and Rod’h felt a lurch inside his mind and his heart. This did not come through the thism, but from a back channel, a hook that latched onto the bond he shared with his halfbreed siblings. It felt like cold hard claws in his mind.
Next, the shadow cloud came toward him. It had spotted him.
Shocked, he clutched his head, tried to clear his mind. A lightning bolt of adrenaline shot through him. Was this how the shadows had found Gale’nh aboard the Kolpraxa? This time, his brother was aboard a heavily armored warliner, but Rod’h was in a tiny, unprotected scout ship. Were the Shana Rei seeking some new specimen to study? Another halfbreed?
Alone in his damaged craft, Rod’h felt vulnerable. Too late, he realized that his automatic distress signal was still pulsing, calling out for help—drawing attention. The Solar Navy ships could never respond in the midst of battle … but the black robot ships did. Six angular vessels broke away from the main group and hurtled toward him.
Rod’h managed to get one of his engines functioning again and retreated into the dubious shelter of the dead verdani vessel. The armored branches around him acted as a protective barbed fence, but he doubted it would last long. He finally succeeded in silencing the distress beacon, but far too late. They had him now.
The armored hulk of the tree trunk was like a small moon beneath him, offering no shelter. Rod’h limped along, seeking some kind of opening, but he could see no way to enter, no place to hide.
Six robot ships fell upon the petrified verdani battleship with wanton destruction, as if taking revenge for a never-forgotten vendetta. Energy weapons blasted into the dead branches, shattering huge boughs and smashing parts of the tree into splinters as they worked their way in to get him.
One blast tore into the armored trunk of the dead treeship, cracking open the swollen wood—and the frozen bole split apart like a long-sealed hangar being blasted open to space. A cloud of small humanoid bodies spilled out like seeds from a burst pod—Onthos! Thousands and thousands of them, long dead, but packed into honeycombed chambers of the enormous treeship.
Rod’h stared. This was not just a verdani exploration vessel nor even a battleship, as he had expected. This huge, swollen tree had been filled with countless Onthos, like a hive of burrowers or spores in a ripe ball fungus—it was an escape ship! As their star system was englobed by the impenetrable black plates, the Gardeners must have tried to flee in the only way possible, packing as many refugees as possible into a lifeboat … which had ultimately been killed before it could escape.
Rod’h stared in horror, still evading the robot attacks. As the blackened trunk cracked and split wider, more of the hapless alien bodies spilled into space. The evacuation treeship had never gotten away from the system. All of those Onthos had been doomed, floating far from their extinguished sun, sealed inside their verdani graveyard.
Just as he would be, and all the Solar Navy ships, unless they could get away.
Outside, the shadow cloud kept extending closer. Rod’h could feel the Shana Rei screaming in his mind, poking and plucking at his thoughts. He squeezed his eyes shut, pressed his palms against his skull, but he could not silence them.
The robot ships blasted at the dead treeship, tearing apart the protective briarpatch until they finally exposed his vulnerable craft. Rod’h saw the predatory black vessels looming in front of him and was sure they would destroy him at any instant.
Loud bursts of static came over his comm, then a familiar voice, a flicker of Gale’nh crying out to him. “Rod’h! I am coming for you!”
The burst died into a squelch of louder static that sounded like electronic laughter. The robot ships hung in front of him, their weapons activated … but then scattered off to continue the main attack against the Solar Navy and the Kutuzov. Leaving him alone.
For the barest instant, Rod’h thought he had received a reprieve, that he might survive after all. But the shadow cloud swelled closer, blocking out the stars and the flashes of weapons fire from the space battle, encompassing everything with suffocating nothingness.
He screamed both aloud and inside his mind, crying out from the bottom of his soul. He couldn’t escape, couldn’t even self-destruct his ship to prevent the shadows from taking him. He reached through the thism and through his sibling bond with Gale’nh, Tamo’l, Osira’h, and Muree’n. He screamed.
Then all was silenced, in complete darkness as if his very soulfire had been smothered in pitch black … just as the Onthos star had been.