The Dark Between The Stars

NINETY-NINE
AELIN

No one in the ekti-extraction field objected when Aelin asked to use an inspection pod so he could see the strange nodules up close. The controls were simple enough, and he accessed information from the worldforest. The bloaters called to him, a powerful, weighty presence that seemed to promise so much more. He wondered why no one else could sense it…

He left the industrial complex, with its cold metal decks and artificial light, and headed toward the majesty of the drifting cluster. The thrumming sensation in the back of his mind indicated a presence greater than and different from the huge tapestry of the verdani mind—possibly only a hint of something even more vast.

He needed to comprehend it better. The bloaters were much more than mere space plankton. He wished he could have shared this experience with Shelud, even if only through telink before his brother died of the plague…

Now he tried to recapture his sense of wonder so that it brightened his shadowy depression. He had never felt like this before. Aelin always had dreams, always looked to the sky and imagined places beyond the worldforest, but now that he had ventured far out into the Spiral Arm, he had not found what he expected. Neither had Shelud.

The inspection pod was cramped, built for only one person; it had external arms and manipulator tools for servicing space equipment. Aelin set his potted treeling beside him and flew forward, paying little attention to the lights of other Iswander ships and facilities.

Hundreds of bloaters had been drained of ekti and the cluster was diminished by half. The remaining nodules continued to drift toward the nearest star, which grew brighter every day.

The pod approached the greenish tan spheres. He touched the treeling, opened his thoughts as a green priest, but the phantom half-entity he sensed out there had nothing to do with the verdani mind. In fact, the looming presence seemed to make the stars themselves insignificant.

Suddenly an alert notice skittered across the comm channels, and the ekti-field workers withdrew. Extraction operations raised their shields. Alarms began to ring.

Aelin barely knew how to work the pod controls, and he didn’t understand what was happening until he saw one of the distant bloaters glow, then a closer one responded with a bright flash, followed by a flare from the nucleus of a third bloater. The floating spheres lit up like scattered firecrackers in a staccato pattern.

So quickly that it seemed instantaneous, Aelin felt a tingle through his skin, a flicker in the treeling beneath his fingertips. He looked out at the gentle curve of the swollen nodule drifting right in front of him—

A chain lightning of mysterious signals ricocheted from one bloater to another, and the one directly before Aelin lit up with an explosive flash. It sent a surge through telink, an avalanche of light that continued to build as other bloaters flared, spark after spark.

He gasped, and his mind ignited. The flash was entirely inside of him, behind his eyes, throughout his mind. An overwhelming flood filled him with awe and ecstasy… and continued to build.

The flash was over in an instant, but Aelin could barely see. He tried to focus again, but the light was everywhere. He saw that his treeling had died, burned out in the pot beside him. His pod reeled, tumbling end over end.

Within him, the flare grew brighter and brighter, and Aelin had no way to stop it. Even retreating into unconsciousness was not enough. He couldn’t get the light out of his head.