ROD’H
Facing their fear, Solar Navy and CDF teams explored the deep darkness inside the sealed Onthos star system. General Keah dispatched a squadron of solo CDF scout ships, but Ildirans hated to be alone, and their terror was only amplified by the dark impenetrable shell.
As a halfbreed, though, Rod’h was strong enough to handle it, as was his brother Gale’nh. Their mixed heritage gave the two men an anchor against traditional Ildiran fears, and they were even stronger because of the close psychic bond among all of Nira’s halfbreed children. They volunteered to be part of the first exploratory team to set foot on the dark Onthos planet.
And the human historian Anton Colicos insisted on going along as well.
The large transport that departed from the flagship warliner was practically an expedition, a personnel shuttle large enough to carry fifty scientists, guards, engineers, and astronomers, as well as Rod’h, Gale’nh, and Rememberer Anton. They headed toward the dark, frozen sphere that had been home to the Gardeners and another separate worldforest.
Rod’h was eager and curious, while the rest of the Ildirans were intimidated, tense. Gale’nh, oddly enough, looked strong and focused, even with the scars of the Shana Rei all around them. His pale hair and skin were unsettling to Ildirans, a constant reminder of the hell he had endured—much as the burn scars on Prime Designate Daro’h’s face proclaimed how he had once faced the faeros and mad Designate Rusa’h.
Rod’h, though, remained undamaged—his bravery and defiance had no chinks.
The expedition descended to the dark planet—a lifeless, cold emptiness that showed no city lights, nor gave off any thermal readings. The sun had been extinguished, the outside stars eclipsed, and the Onthos homeworld had withered in complete darkness.
The pilot of the transport circled over the dark planet, playing high-intensity blazers across the landscape to illuminate a rugged, uneven surface like scratched obsidian. Anton Colicos took diligent notes, keeping a record to write later.
After the transport cruised above the dark landscape for an hour, Rod’h was impatient. “Land the ship,” he declared, to the consternation of the Ildiran scientists. He gave them a sour look. “We will never have our answers unless we set foot down there. Directly.”
Tal Gale’nh outranked everyone on board, and he issued the order. “My brother is correct. We have come this far. We must finish our mission.”
Anton nodded. “I agree. We have to bring back our discoveries—everyone is waiting to see what we find out.”
The pilot found a supposedly safe spot to land. Rod’h was the first to don an environment suit, and Gale’nh joined him. The two of them assisted each other in checking the seals, adjusting the gloves and life-support packs, and sealing the swirled, conch-shaped helmets. Anton Colicos needed help suiting up, but he soon stood prepared, ready to set foot outside.
Armed guard kithmen suited up in the main gathering bay, wearing larger armored suits with built-in energy weapons. Each also carried a reinforced cudgel with a sharp crystalline blade, which might have been useful for direct physical combat, though less graceful in space or low gravity.
“We have sufficient weaponry for protection,” announced one of the guard kithmen. Rod’h did not expect they would face combat here, however. This world was a dead place, and he doubted anything could harm them here other than their own Ildiran fears.
Rememberer Anton said, “It would be more useful to make sure that we each carry enough light.”
Rod’h took a handheld blazer and activated the power. Gale’nh and Anton did the same, and the guards followed suit. The landed transport was a blaze of bright reflections, alone in the cold darkness.
They opened the hatch and exited into the blackest forest imaginable filled with angular monoliths frozen into obsidian, like towers of long razors. The skeletal remains of the trees were only blacker silhouettes against an utterly lightless sky.
The group moved cautiously forward in their environment suits, leaving footprints in the powdery ground. Gale’nh and Rod’h walked shoulder-to-shoulder, while the guard kithmen spread out in a protective formation. Anton Colicos ventured off, curious, shining his blazer in different directions. Three nervous scientist kithmen performed their expected mission, taking samples of the soil and indecipherable frozen matter.
The bright beams made a spray of razor-edged shadows. Around them towered the black behemoths of long-dead worldtrees, nightmarish forms that seemed to have been carved from skeletal obsidian. Dead trees loomed, the dusty bones of a once great worldforest, but there were also signs of the ancient Onthos civilization.
These immense trees were connected by the remnants of looping artificial skyways, metal bridges and arches built long ago. Spikelike towers rose high into an impenetrable sky, piercing what once had been a dense, lush canopy.
Rod’h marched forward, shining his handblazer ahead as he approached the nearest worldtree. The shadows were so dark and the glare of the light so bright that the massive trunk looked distorted, different from the worldtrees that lined parklike boulevards in Mijistra. This dead obelisk had no golden bark scales, no soft green fronds. With a gloved hand, he touched the trunk, but felt only sharp, cold resistance.
Gale’nh spoke through the comm, his voice startlingly loud in the helmet, “When I was in darkness, I lost a major part of myself, but I am trying to gain it back. These trees, though … they will never gain back what they have lost.”
“We need to retrieve samples,” said Anton. “A lot of samples.”
Two scientist kithmen stepped forward, removing sharp hammers and narrow chisels from their specimen kits. When they struck the points against the petrified trunk to remove a splinter, the entire mammoth tree shuddered—and then shattered into a rain of black dust that fell glittering in the beams of their blazers. Rod’h and Gale’nh hunched over to protect themselves, but the obsidian flakes were mere black sparkles of the massive trunk. The ghost of the worldtree disintegrated into black shards.
“Now we have plenty of samples,” Rememberer Anton said, helping the scientists to scoop up the ebony splinters. The ground was covered with black charcoal.
As they continued through the silent wreckage, shining lights in the darkest corners, they found many more collapsed trees, uprooted titans that had pulled down the once-majestic Onthos buildings and walkways.
Anton Colicos sounded amazed. “It must have been a thriving and beautiful world. I’ve seen the Gardener refugees on Theroc—so quiet, so grateful. They’re the only ones who escaped.”
Embedding blazer beacons in the ground to mark their way, the party explored further. They stopped when they found the skeletons of thousands and thousands of small-statured Onthos encircling a mound of tumbled trunks caked with powdery residue. “The Gardeners must have come here, knowing they were about to die,” Anton said.
“They would have frozen or suffocated,” Rod’h said. “Once their sun was snuffed out and the black sphere enclosed the solar system, they had no chance. But they all gathered here—I wonder why.”
Anton approached the black mound and reached forward with a gloved hand. “These are boughs from the worldtrees—pieces of wood piled here.” He rubbed with his gloves, looked at the black dust on his fingers. “It’s nearly disintegrated now. These remnants are more fragile than the other trees. It reminds me of…” He drew in a quick, audible breath as the understanding came to him. “This was a fire—a gigantic bonfire.” He stood up. “When their sun went out and night fell forever, the last of the Onthos must have gathered the dead worldtree wood, maybe even cutting down other trees. They created a huge bonfire. They must have been starving for any kind of light.”
“And then they all died here,” Gale’nh said.
Rod’h stepped away from the pile of cinders and shone his blazer on the frozen body of an Onthos. The creature lay with its sticklike hands up in the air, desperate for warmth and light. Its large eyes were like black marbles.
“Take specimens,” he said. “Two bodies should be sufficient. Maybe we can learn something from them.”
A message from the Kutuzov burst came through their suitcomms on the main septa channel. “Adar Zan’nh—we found something at the barrier. You’d better have a look.”
Recovering remnants from the bonfire, Rod’h looked at his brother, whose face was pale behind the transparent faceplate. Gale’nh said, “We have seen enough here. It is as the Gardeners said—this world is devoid of life and light.”
* * *
Once back aboard the flagship and heading for General Keah’s coordinates, Gale’nh and Rod’h debriefed the Adar. Rememberer Anton displayed the images he had taken of the dark forest, the dead world.
Rod’h felt agitated and angry at what they had seen. “Now we know the shadows destroyed this star system, just as they attacked the Ildiran Empire long ago. We must learn how to defeat them!”
The Adar regarded him with a cool expression. “That is exactly what we’re attempting to do.”
The CDF Juggernaut was parked on the inner boundary of the Dyson sphere, where the Shana Rei englobement had swallowed the orbit of the system’s lone gas giant. That planet was also now dead, cold, and dark.
In the command nucleus, General Keah’s face appeared on the screen, looking both worried and annoyed. “I just received some very serious news, Z, through my green priest. Ulio Station is under attack by a shadow cloud and robot warships. It’s devastating, and the bugbots aren’t taking any prisoners.”
“Are you suggesting that we depart and go fight for Ulio Station?” asked Adar Zan’nh. “We could not be effective.”
Keah scowled. “There’s no point. We’re a minimum of five or six days out at top stardrive output. By then it’ll be too late. Mr. Nadd has already lost contact with the green priest at Ulio, so the destruction may already be over. Telink messages have gone out to other CDF battleships, and there are at least ten Mantas on the way, but I doubt they’ll arrive in time either.”
Rod’h stewed, feeling helpless against the terrible enemy. That attack was happening right now. “Then if nothing else, we need to learn something vital here to take back with us.”
They reached the dim gas giant just inside the black shell, and the Kutuzov cruised up on the curved obsidian barrier. “Follow us up here, Z. We only spotted these things because one of our scout Remoras almost crashed into one. Damn! Reminds me of a cluster of dead flies on a windowsill.”
Adar Zan’nh used the ship’s full scanners to actively map what General Keah had discovered: a cluster of gigantic diamond spheres, at least forty of them, each one adorned with pyramidal spikes. All of them were gray, lifeless, cold. They dwarfed both the warliner and the Kutuzov.
Rod’h had been young at the end of the Elemental War, but he remembered these horrifying objects.
Hydrogue warglobes.
General Keah said, “It looks like the Shana Rei are picking on more than just us. We’re not the only ones in this fight.”