AELIN
The moment a doorway opened up in the underworld of the universe, Aelin felt the Shana Rei like a dark knife to the heart. He remembered the wrench in his gut when the other shadow cloud had appeared at the first Iswander extraction yard. And now that he had been baptized in the powerful blood of the cosmos, he was even more attuned to the danger. This was the throb of warning he had felt resonating through his senses. Now he understood, but too late.
Aelin suddenly shuddered and hunched over. He staggered against Dauntha’s wall, the one painted with worldtrees. “They’re here. The shadows are here.”
The other green priest grabbed for her treeling, searching for information while shouting a warning through telink, “Ulio Station is under attack!”
Loud alarms ratcheted through the station. Evacuation signals rang across the interconnected comm systems. Aelin joined her at the treeling, where he could feel tension shudder through the verdani mind. Ever since the Shana Rei had attacked Theroc, and the Onthos refugees had shared memories of the ancient extinguished worldforest, the trees had been terrified of the creatures of darkness. The green priest Nadd had just sent the first reports from the Onthos star system, which was smothered inside a gigantic black shell. The power of the Shana Rei seemed immeasurable.
Explosions echoed through the parked warliner at the heart of Ulio Station. Dauntha delivered details of the ongoing attack via telink, so that all green priests understood the threat to the depot, even though no help could possibly arrive in time.
Black hex ships hung inside the looming shadow cloud, while the aggressive robot squadron blasted ships that tried to evacuate. A more powerful concussion resounded through the decks, nearly toppling the potted treeling from the table.
Aelin knew that for some reason the Shana Rei had a particular antipathy toward the bloaters, and even though there were no bloaters in the vicinity, Ulio Station kept the large stockpile array of ekti-X tanks. That was the essence of the bloaters—and he could think only of shadows, blood, and fire.
He pulled his fingers away from the treeling. “I have to go.”
“Yes.” Dauntha’s voice was distant, as if she could spare only a fraction of her consciousness for him. “We don’t both need to die.”
“You don’t need to die. Carry your treeling, find one of the departing ships. Take your chances.”
Now, Dauntha’s eyes focused on his. “No—I’m old and I live within the verdani mind. I would be no good to anyone. I may as well stay here, connected to my treeling, so that the rest of Theroc can know every moment.”
Aelin scanned the tattoos on her face, her scalp, her neck, her shoulders—the chronicle of a remarkable life. Dauntha still had something very important to do. And so did he.
Aelin remembered when his brother Shelud had faded slowly into death from the alien plague. A green priest’s memories, perhaps even part of the soul, would survive within the trees. Dauntha had made her choice. As he left her chambers, she immersed herself in her link with the treeling, losing herself in the verdani mind, never again to come out.
Aelin sprinted through the corridors on bare feet. A huge explosion rocked the entire ship, and severe tremors knocked him to his knees. He climbed back up, ignored a skinned and bloody knee, and kept running.
Corridor lights flickered as systems were damaged. Outside through the windowports, he saw countless wrecked ships that tumbled burning as their fuel mixed with vented atmosphere. Aelin felt the claws of encroaching darkness within him like an embolism, and he clutched his chest, gritted his teeth, and forced it away. He forced himself onward.
When he reached the connecting hatch that led to the exterior fuel stockpile and the holding array, the stern guards were no longer there. He could sense the bloater essence in the tanks.
The Shana Rei refused to move, hovering at a safe distance, but he needed to harm the creatures of darkness in any way possible. Aelin had to get out there to the anchored array to execute his plan. He had to call the robot ships.
Shadows … fire … blood.
The corridor lights flickered again, and suddenly the deck plunged into blackness. There was a hiss of air, and all of the alarms fell silent. The unexpected quiet and darkness disoriented him more than terrified him. The gravity also failed, and he drifted upward in the darkness, which made him dizzier still.
Suddenly, explosions shattered the silence. Lights rippled on through the corridor again, and Aelin fell to the deck, crashing on his face as the gravity came back on. He picked himself up. Only a few flickers of emergency light stuttered on. The connecting door had closed and sealed; without power or computer access, Aelin could not open the hatch and make his way to the ekti-X stockpile. Then, like a blessing or a cosmic joke, the door sighed open all by itself.
Aelin sprinted into the secure chamber adjacent to the anchored stockpile. As the lights flickered out again, he memorized the location of what he saw: equipment lockers that held environment suits like the one he had stolen from Alec Pannebaker.
The power failed once more, but enough blossoming explosions and flashes of destroyed ships flickered through the windowports that he could still make his way. He rummaged in the lockers, fumbling and sizing the suits by feel until one seemed adequate. It didn’t have to last long.
As the disaster continued outside the station, he crawled into the suit, checked the seals, remembering the steps from when he had escaped the Iswander extraction field. He fastened every component, checked the safety interlocks. Half of the systems blinked yellow, several went dead. Aelin didn’t care. The suit would protect him long enough. The helmet comm unit still worked. That was important.
He entered the airlock chamber and saw that the manual systems still functioned, much to his relief. He started the cycle, then punched the emergency button, which caused an instantaneous dump of the contained atmosphere. The outer door opened, tumbling Aelin out into the array of tanks.
He knew about the black robots, had studied them extensively through telink—there were numerous records of their attitudes and personalities from the Elemental War. They were ruthless and vengeful, and they thrived on causing pain to other living things. Aelin understood them.
In his ill-fitting spacesuit, he drifted out into the stockpile array, and as he nestled among the ekti-X tanks, he felt faintly connected to the bloaters again. He remembered the larger reality that those mysterious nodules had allowed him to glimpse, if only briefly.
Once in position, vulnerable out in space while the attacks rushed all around him, Aelin triggered his distress signal. Many Confederation and independent ships had already pulled away from the large cluster, so that the framework of Ulio Station now looked oddly skeletal. Space around him was dark except for the sparks and explosions. Wreckage littered the emptiness, some pieces tumbling into the fringes of the shadow cloud.
The black robot ships were like a pack of predators, choosing and destroying one target, then another. The Shana Rei were not close enough to be affected by what Aelin would do, but that would not stop him.
He transmitted on an open frequency that he was sure the robots would be monitoring. He knew exactly how the monstrous machines would respond. “Help! This is an emergency!” Aelin said. “I have one hundred innocent women and children with me here. We’re helpless. Please don’t let the Klikiss robots come after us.” He was surprised at his own deviousness, but he was certain this was precisely the right bait to use. “We can’t escape! Home in on my emergency signal at these coordinates. Rescue us. We have no other hope.”
The relentless black robots were perfectly predictable.
Like a school of razor beetles, the robot ships swooped toward the fuel-storage array. Aelin hung there, holding on to the tanks, one arm wrapped around the grid framework. The robot weapons were bright and hot, ready to shoot.
“Please don’t fire on us,” Aelin transmitted. “Please.”
The black robots did not understand reverse psychology. They closed in, locked on target.
Aelin clung to the nearest tank, thinking of the bloaters, wishing he could be immersed in them again, like the womb of the universe, the perfect amniotic fluid that had awakened him, purified him.
The black warships homed in on the coordinates. Close … very close. They opened fire on the array.
Shadows. Blood. Fire.
The cluster of ekti tanks ignited at once, like an awakening star.