TAL GALE’NH
The battle was lost.
Tal Gale’nh realized that as he watched the damaged Solar Navy ships and saw the superior number of black robot vessels brought into the fray. He had never expected the enemy robots to have so many battleships. And the designs seemed even more powerful than the attackers at Hiltos.
General Keah kept shouting over the comm, encouraging her soldiers to open fire with every possible weapon they had. At first, Gale’nh had thought the expeditionary force might succeed in driving the Shana Rei ships back into their shadow cloud, but now, against all comprehension, the shadow vessels seemed to be rallying, even after the tremendous sun-bomb detonations. The Kutuzov had suffered severe damage, but General Keah refused to withdraw. She had no place to go.
Two warliners were completely destroyed, and one more—piloted by Septar Dre’nh—so damaged that it could barely maneuver, but its stardrive still functioned, so Adar Zan’nh commanded Dre’nh to escape back to Ildira. Gale’nh was sure the other four warliners would need to do the same—if they were able. Countless distress signals flickered through space.
Meanwhile, Gale’nh could sense Rod’h alone in his trapped scout craft … and he knew exactly when the deadly enemy detected him. Like vicious animals, the robots blasted through the branches of the dead verdani battleship, tearing their way through to Rod’h.
The entropy disruption from the Shana Rei rendered ship-to-ship comm systems useless, except for intermittent clear spots. Gale’nh desperately tried to contact his brother, but received only static in response. Rod’h’s scout ship was helpless as the black robot ships dismantled the briarpatch sheltering him. With a great weight in his heart, Gale’nh remembered how the shadows had trapped the Kolpraxa.
He yelled to the helmsman. “Change course—back to the verdani ship! We must rescue Rod’h.”
The pulsing shadow cloud grew like a nightmarish black amoeba, and Gale’nh froze with a terrified flashback of seeing the same thing from the command nucleus of the Kolpraxa. In order to survive that horrific ordeal, Gale’nh’s own mind had shut down. He remembered nothing from the terror of that timeless captivity, but the creatures of darkness had surely studied him, learned from him … perhaps even tainted him permanently.
Rod’h was an even stronger halfbreed than he was, and the Shana Rei would definitely want him—to study him, dissect his mind.
“I am coming for you, Rod’h!” The warliner raced toward the splintered remnants of the verdani battleship, the countless thousands of spilled Onthos bodies tumbling like spores into space. When he saw that the robot vessels had surrounded Rod’h’s scout ship, he demanded more speed. Tears burned on his face.
His helmsman struggled to wring all possible energy from the warliner’s engines. Unexpectedly, the robot vessels withdrew from the exposed scout ship and dashed toward his oncoming warliner, opening fire. Tal Gale’nh had to deplete half of his weapons banks just to fend them off—but this was Rod’h’s chance, if he could get away! He succeeded in wiping out one robot ship and damaging two others.
But it was too late for his brother. The Shana Rei were coming for him.
Gale’nh watched in horrified disbelief as the shadow cloud enveloped the tiny scout ship and swallowed Rod’h. He felt an outcry in the thism, and he shouted aloud himself. The rest of his crew could feel it, but not with the same intensity. Through his special sibling bond, he remained connected with Rod’h—and as the swirling pseudopod of darkness retreated with its prize, he knew that his half-brother was still alive, a prisoner of the Shana Rei.
In the space battlefield above the Onthos system, one more warliner was damaged, and Adar Zan’nh commanded its captain to escape to Ildira. Finally, he transmitted a retreat to the three remaining ships in the septa. “We are an exploratory force, not a full battle cohort. We must withdraw!”
Twelve robot battleships converged on the Kutuzov in a cluster, using their surprising weaponry to wear down her dwindling shields. Gale’nh could see that General Keah would not last much longer; nevertheless, the Juggernaut continued to fight.
And then, separate from the main firefight, he saw the damaged Shana Rei hex ships do something unbelievable, and Gale’nh groaned in dismay.
When the extending shadow cloud touched the ebony Dyson sphere, the trillions of interlocked hexagonal plates shuddered. Cracks appeared between them, and the hex plates detached, breaking apart like spilled mosaic tiles in an ever widening gap. The components drifted loose, hovered motionless, then spun back into the shadow cloud and reattached to the ends of the giant black hex cylinders. Hundreds and then thousands of hex plates flew away from the Dyson sphere and rejoined—rejuvenated the creatures of darkness. The damaged ebony cylinders began to grow, assimilating as much material as they had lost from the sun bombs and laser cannons. The Shana Rei ships swelled like parasites gorging themselves with black blood, until they were even larger than before.
“We must depart,” Adar Zan’nh cried over the comm. “All warliners, retreat!”
Gale’nh still felt his brother’s despair, lost in the shadows. How could he leave Rod’h?
The beleaguered CDF Juggernaut kept fighting, and losing, but General Keah had one last trick to play. Her voice cut across the comm line. “Swallow this, you bugbot bastards.” The Kutuzov launched one of its remaining sun bombs directly into the group of attacking robot ships, then retreated at full speed as the sun bomb detonated.
The nova explosion was more than enough to obliterate all twelve robot ships that had been harassing the Juggernaut. With a weary tone of celebration, Keah transmitted, “I think that’s all the fight I’ve got left in me, Z. Time to exercise the better part of valor.”
Her damaged Kutuzov limped away, while the reeling robot ships chased after it, infuriated by the loss of their comrades.
Gale’nh’s screens were filled with static, half of his systems were failing from the Shana Rei entropy as well as damage from the space battle. “Rod’h!” He could feel his brother surrounded by darkness, but there was no conceivable way Gale’nh could rescue him. At least not now.
The gaping hole in the obsidian Dyson sphere continued to collapse as more and more hexagonal plates were incorporated into the Shana Rei ships, rebuilding them. The angled cylinders were already larger and more powerful than any Shana Rei ship they had ever encountered.
Then, with a reservoir of ebony material available, the loose hex plates began building another black cylinder, like a crystal growing out of a new seed.
Entropy distortions shimmered out of the shadow cloud, and power began to die in Gale’nh’s warliner.
“Our engines are failing, Tal,” cried his chief engineer. “If we don’t leave now, we may never be able to activate our stardrive.”
The Adar’s loud and implacable voice broke through the static. “All Solar Navy ships—return to Ildira. Now!”
The black robots closed in.
Gale’nh’s heart wrenched as he came to the only possible decision. Rod’h was lost to the Shana Rei. “Follow the Adar’s orders. Withdraw immediately.”
He held on to the command rail, but his knees were weak. He wanted to sag to the deck, but he could not show such weakness. When he closed his eyes, Gale’nh could not bear the darkness he found there, so he opened them again in the bright lights of the command nucleus.
With a lurch, the stardrive activated, and his warliner reeled away from the Gardeners’ dead star system.