ZHETT KELLUM
It was a day remarkably free of clouds for Kuivahr. As Zhett stood with Patrick on the high deck of the distillery platform, she looked up to see both moons close together in the sky.
“Your turn.” Patrick handed her baby Rex, who willingly extended his pudgy hands for his mother to take him. He was old enough to be walking on his own—or running places where he shouldn’t go, which made him more of a risk. Fortunately the toddler was still needy and preferred to be held. A low-output antigrav harness kept him tethered to his mother or father, so they could do their work while keeping Rex close.
Zhett sniffed, frowned, and held Rex in front of her, but it wasn’t a messy diaper, just the usual stench of the mudflats around the base of the distillery tower. Having spent much of her life aboard drifting cloud harvesters on gas giants, she was accustomed to sour vapors rising from the cloud bands. But she didn’t think she’d ever get used to the fishy, iodine odors of this place.
Below, she and Patrick watched cargo being loaded onto a pontoon landing raft: cases of freshly bottled Ooze for personal consumption, as well as large kegs that would be sent to Rlinda Kett’s restaurants, their exclusive customer for this particular batch.
The dull buzz of conversation wafted up to them, followed by laughter. Pointing down, Patrick indicated a teenager on a personal waveskimmer circling the pontoon raft. Kristof headed out to meet a group of Ildiran swimmers who were coming in with freshly harvested kelp for the distillery mash tanks. Toff seemed to be teasing the otterlike swimmers, raising rooster tails of water as he circled them. Zhett could see him grinning. The laughter stopped with a splash as one of the Ildirans upended the skimmer, spilling Toff into the water. He came up sputtering and retrieved the skimmer, but he didn’t really mind being drenched.
Del Kellum sauntered out onto the deck to join them. “Once our kelpbeer catches on, we’re going to need a larger landing raft, by damn. We’ll be shipping kegs all across the Spiral Arm. We’ll have to increase production, too.”
Zhett said, “I’d rather get rid of our old stockpiles first, Dad. Nobody seems to want the early stuff.”
“Maybe because it still tastes bad,” Patrick said. “We should just dump it into the sea.”
“What, and kill all the kelp?” Zhett teased.
Del sniffed. “It’s not bad, it’s … classic. Just needs to be aged properly.”
When a small transport ship was loaded on the landing raft, workers sealed the hatches and stepped away so the ship could lift off. On a bright column of vapor, it rose into the unusually clear sky.
Del continued, “Yoder’s ship is in orbit, ready to take a full load.”
“He’s a month late,” Zhett said.
“Had a bit of a crash-landing incident, nowhere close to a repair facility or spare parts,” Del explained. “But he’s back in his routine now.”
Routine … that was what this had become. Zhett supposed family life and a successful business on a calm planet was a nice reward in itself. Skymining was in her blood, but thanks to all the ekti-X produced by Iswander Industries, clan Kellum couldn’t justify the outrageous expense of rebuilding a cloud harvester, or even buying a cheap secondhand one, like the one Aaron Duquesne had tried to sell them. Under normal circumstances, a new skymine would have taken most of clan Kellum’s wealth plus a good chunk of Patrick’s inheritance. Right now, the distillery was probably their best bet.
As she held the baby, Zhett wondered if Rex would one day take over the distillery operations, just as she and Patrick had taken over from her father. Toff and Rex could run the operations together, a good business for two brothers.
But it wouldn’t be Shareen. Their daughter had a remarkable opportunity working with Kotto Okiah at Fireheart Station. It was going to change the girl’s life. Zhett was sure that Shareen had big things in store for her.
The intercom blared, startling them. “Del, Zhett, Patrick! Get to the control deck—right away!” It was Marius Denva, the distillery’s operations manager. “You’re going to want to see this—on second thought, you probably don’t want to see it, but you better get here anyway.”
The distillery’s upper-level control center was a big open area with screens, systems ops, and a lot of clutter; the distillery didn’t actually need a full-fledged command center the way a large skymine did. The workers tended to be casual; unpacked boxes lay around or were stacked in corners.
Right now all the people were staring at the screens. The bearded, gray-haired trader Dando Yoder was transmitting from his ship in orbit. He had a rough squawking voice. “It just appeared! Huge. Black. My systems are all going haywire! Half my screens are down—can’t even activate the nav computer.”
Zhett had been expecting some business headache, but what she saw on the screen made her heart turn cold. Patrick groaned. “Not again!”
Rather than sending up geysers of blackness in a gas giant’s atmosphere, this time the Shana Rei emerged in orbit above Kuivahr. The dark nebula bled through a tear in the fabric of space, flowing out in an ever-widening pool like spilled ink. Five cylindrical six-sided ships extended from the cloud, showing no running lights or markings whatsoever. They resembled massive obsidian crystals, growing larger as they emerged.
“What am I supposed to do up here?” Yoder said. “I just got my ship repaired, and I don’t have weapons for this!”
“You can’t fight!” Zhett grabbed the comm. “Just get out of here!” The trader didn’t need to be told twice. His ship streaked out of orbit, heading away from the black cloud.
“What the hell do the Shana Rei want here?” Patrick asked no one in particular. “We’re just a distillery. They can have all the Primordial Ooze they want.”
“I’ll be sure to ask for an explanation if we have a chance to chat,” Zhett said.
“Well, we didn’t do anything to provoke them at Golgen either, by damn!” Del said.
The hex ships loomed above, as if they meant to crush everyone on Kuivahr. Thin slices detached from the flat ends and fell toward low orbit. A chain of hex plates spun away from all five Shana Rei cylinders and drifted down toward the outer edge of the atmosphere in a blizzard of material. As if carefully guided, one hex plate aligned its edge with a second, then a third. They joined together, coalescing.
Maurice Denva stood by the comm, staring at the screen. “Am I supposed to transmit a surrender or something? Ask for terms?”
“You won’t get an answer,” Zhett said.
Hundreds more hex plates spun off, clicked together, and began assembling a barricade, piece by piece by piece.
Patrick looked at her. “We know what’s going to happen—no point in waiting and pretending.”
“No point at all,” Zhett agreed, holding on to Rex. “It’s time to get out of here.”