AELIN
When he allowed himself to awaken from his deathlike trance, Aelin was bone-shatteringly cold. Stagnant air filled his lungs, and he exhaled, then drank in oxygen, draining some of the last wisps in his connected tanks. The array of ekti-X cylinders had arrived at Ulio Station, and now the big framework hung near the central backbone of abandoned wrecks.
Aelin didn’t move his body as he became aware; he simply blinked his eyes and stared through the helmet faceplate. His body chemistry allowed him to survive on the tiniest gasps of oxygen at freezing temperatures, and he had spent days immersed in a trance with a nearly nonexistent heartbeat. Now, he warmed himself strictly by increasing his metabolism.
Around him, he could no longer sense the thrumming musical song of the bloaters, though he did feel an echo from the tanks themselves, as if the ekti-X still held some kind of energy from the exotic things. His trance-addled brain seemed more sensitive than before, touching the faint cries of the bloaters that had been wrung dry to harvest this fuel.
The tank array was now anchored to one of the stationary hulls that comprised Ulio Station. Transfer ships began to remove the fuel canisters. Aelin felt his thoughts sharpen, and knew he would have to get out of here. Soon.
Aelin glanced at the levels of his oxygen and life-support batteries. Everything read empty … almost. His arms, hands, and feet were numb, and he began to shiver violently, which would burn some of his remaining oxygen—and he couldn’t afford that. He had no choice but to increase the heat in his suit, draining some of the last blips of power in the life-support batteries … which he also couldn’t afford. Only one of the packs contained any charge at all, and he discarded the rest of them as extraneous.
He disengaged the clip that anchored him in place. Fortunately, his maneuvering-gas tanks were mostly full. He had seen Pannebaker do pirouettes during his gap jumps, spinning around while floating among the industrial operations. Aelin just needed enough propellant to jet out of the array.
A nudge from the propellant jet pushed him through the framework, toward the outside. Other suited workers flitted about; several noticed him, but showed no alarm. His Iswander suit might look different from theirs, but there was no standardized uniform among the station workers. Apparently, at Ulio everyone brought their own equipment.
Keeping his comm switched off, Aelin accelerated down toward the main ships bound together to form Ulio Station: ancient Ildiran wrecks and decommissioned EDF Juggernauts. He knew nothing about this station, had never used his treeling to research the ever-expanding flea market and repair yard. Maybe he would find a green priest on one of the ships clustered here; maybe he would touch a treeling again, reconnect with the verdani mind, although that contact was only a glimmer of what he had touched when he linked with the bloaters. At least he was away, and hope was like adrenaline to him now.
He was revived now, his pulse quickened to a normal rate, but he forced himself to breathe shallowly. His last air tank read empty, as did the remaining battery pack. He had to get inside.
He dove toward the nearest main ship, a repurposed Ildiran warliner with satellite vessels connected like parasites to every possible docking port. Each one of those barnacle ships also had access hatches—and he made his way to the closest one via the shortest possible path. He tried to stop himself from gasping, from fighting the lack of air; the deep cold settled into him again. Even in free fall, he could barely move his legs.
After he struck the outer hull of the satellite ship, he dragged himself ten meters along the surface until he reached an external airlock. With thick, unresponsive fingers he used the manual-activation switches. He sucked great gulps inside his empty helmet and struggled to crawl into the airlock chamber, which opened too slowly. He felt dizzy. Each breath sounded like hollow thunder inside the helmet, and the thrumming voices of the bloaters had gone far, far away. He drew in another deep breath, but there was nothing to breathe.
The airlock door closed behind him, and atmosphere began pumping in.
Aelin slid down the chamber wall. He wanted to shout, to connect with the bloaters one more time, but they were so far away, and the darkness inside his skull was so close.
Finally, the chamber’s inner door slid open, and Aelin sprawled out onto the deck. He forced himself to roll over, and, with clumsy fingers and uncooperative joints, he managed to remove his glove for greater access. There was plenty of air right there on the other side of the faceplate, but his helmet remained sealed. He finally cracked the seal at his neck, twisted and pulled off his helmet, letting it roll to one side. He just lay there heaving huge breaths, tasting the spaceship’s processed air. It was recycled and filtered with added oxygen. But it was air, it was life.
The satellite ship was silent, the corridor by the service airlock empty. He was surprised no one had come to investigate the airlock activation, but there was so much activity outside, so many suited people coming and going throughout Ulio, apparently no one noticed. Just another business day.
Still, Aelin knew he had to be gone before anyone saw him. He did not want to try to explain why an undocumented green priest had stumbled aboard the ship. As his fingers became more flexible and background warmth crept into his skin, he disconnected the suit components, stripped off the gloves, the life-support pack, and peeled himself out like a Theron insect emerging from a cocoon. He stood in his loincloth, sweaty but shivering—and free.
Aelin had escaped the extraction operations, but he wasn’t sure what to do now. On bare feet, he made his way through the satellite ship and found a connecting passage into the old Ildiran warliner that served as part of Ulio’s core. The old warship’s corridors had been stripped and refurbished, turned into a well-used commerce center.
He felt exposed in the empty sections, but as he made his way to the more crowded decks, he began to feel less obvious. There were so many more people here than at the Iswander extraction complex! Everyone on Ulio Station was accustomed to a panoply of races and garments, and since others didn’t stare at him, Aelin assumed that green priests must be a familiar enough sight, too. A very good sign.
On Theroc, all Aelin had to do was touch a tree, and he could instantly join the community of green priests. Here, he felt isolated, and the crowds were comprised of strangers. Jittery, he was startled whenever someone spoke to him. Fortunately, although he received curious looks, they raised no alarms.
Aelin made his way along, following other moving people. He ended up in a large gathering area, a business exchange filled with loud voices and haggling groups. Commodities boards listed items on offer from cargo ships that had arrived at Ulio. The noise was deafening, frightening.
Disoriented, Aelin bumped into someone, muttered an apology, and hurried off in a different direction. He didn’t like this place at all. Looking for some exit, he turned around and froze. The breath dried up in his lungs.
Elisa Enturi stood there, turned to one side and engaged in a heated discussion with two men. She hadn’t noticed him yet, so Aelin bolted, not watching where he was going—and ran directly into a thin man in an embroidered Roamer jumpsuit sporting the symbol of clan Duquesne.
“Watch where you’re going! I thought green priests were more graceful than that.” The man laughed; two larger men with him laughed as well. None of them seemed to have any humor.
Aelin flailed his hands, tried to get away, but the thin Roamer man caught him by the arm. “No need for that. Who are you running from?”
“Elisa Enturi—I can’t let her see me.”
The man refused to release his grip. “Elisa Enturi? I thought everyone was trying to get information from her, not run from her.”
“I escaped from the bloater field,” Aelin blurted, trying to get away before the woman turned. “She doesn’t want me to reveal anything about their ekti-X operations.”
The Roamer man’s grip tightened further. “What’s a bloater field?”
Aelin struggled. “Large nodules drifting in space. Nobody understands what they are.”
“That’s where ekti-X comes from? That’s where Iswander gets the stardrive fuel?”
Aelin groaned inwardly at what he had revealed. He wanted to stop Lee Iswander from draining and discarding the bloaters for their ekti-X. Iswander did not understand the damage he was doing to the miraculous presence being born in the universe … but Aelin also knew how greedy people could be. They would all want their own source of ekti-X.
If he revealed the source of cheap stardrive fuel, he would inspire a thousand similar operations, instead of stopping the one. He dared not say anything. His stomach twisted into knots; he couldn’t reveal what he knew!
Aelin saw Elisa turning toward the commotion, so he tore his arm free and bolted into the crowd. “Wait, we’ve got more questions for you,” yelled the man from clan Duquesne.
But Aelin ducked and wove his way among other people, panicked. He drew attention to himself in his wild flight, but he kept running anyway, and soon the crowds folded around him, paying little attention.
He found another corridor and ran. Elisa must have spotted him—but why would she even imagine that he had escaped from the extraction field? She couldn’t possibly guess that he’d hidden in the tank array. No one could have known that.
He blundered into an empty well-lit room that might once have been a Solar Navy briefing chamber during the warliner’s service days. Food wrappers littered the deck as if someone regularly took lunch there.
Aelin collapsed in the corner, drew his knees up to his chest, and just sat inhaling, exhaling, and wondering what to do next.