The Dark Between The Stars

ONE HUNDRED AND NINETEEN
LEE ISWANDER

The horrific shadow cloud loomed over the extraction field, the harvesting equipment, the bloaters, and their deflated husks. Black hexagonal ships emerged and were joined by another squad of ominous vessels: Klikiss robot ships!

Alone in the admin module, Lee Iswander transmitted over the main comm, “All ships head down into the star system and regroup.” He remembered those last hours on Sheol, when he had been unable to save his people at the lava-processing facility. Here, instead of being surrounded by magma plumes and thermal spikes, his operations were in the cold dark of space—and the shadow cloud was the coldest and darkest of all.

Iswander clenched his jaw. This time, he would make certain his people got away. He had no room in his conscience for further blame. The Sheol disaster had been caused by bad luck, overconfidence, and poor planning. Here, though—how could he ever have planned for the Shana Rei and the Klikiss robots?

Outside, Alec Pannebaker drove a bulky cargo ship filled with ekti cylinders. He accelerated at full power, but the load was so massive he gained little speed. An obvious target, he seemed to be daring the Shana Rei to notice him. Pannebaker headed up and away from the bloaters, trying to outrun the shadow cloud. Over the comm, he let out a whoop of triumph, as if he did this sort of thing for fun.

As the robot ships blasted at the evacuating ships, Iswander watched the bloaters, holding his breath. He had seen images of how Elisa “accidentally” ignited the ekti-filled bags in the first cluster—with disastrous consequences. Knowing how volatile the bloaters were, Iswander had taken tremendous precautions, providing shielding and insulation to dampen any ignition source in the ekti-extraction field. Still one stray spark could cause another chain-reaction explosion.

Iswander narrowed his eyes. Maybe that’s what he needed.

The extraction yard was not a military installation, and he could not fight an enemy that had trounced the CDF and the Solar Navy, a dark force so terrible that it could crush an entire planetoid. But with the explosive bloaters… Once his people got to a safe distance, maybe Iswander could fire a shot to ignite the remaining bloaters. It was the only defensive possibility he could think of. That might be sufficient to scatter the black robot attackers, repel the shadow cloud.

Maybe, just maybe, his admin module was far enough away to survive the shock wave. But not likely…

As he tensed, running the options through his mind, debating how much he was willing to risk and how valuable the sacrifice would be, Iswander saw a tiny inspection pod leave the admin module. And the pod was flying toward the bloaters, where it would surely be engulfed by the blast.

By now all personnel should have been evacuated. “Damm it!” Fifteen hundred forty-three was more than enough… and he had already lost some people in this mad scramble of an evacuation. He was rapidly losing his chance to inflict damage on the shadow cloud and the robot ships, though. He had to decide.

It was going to be a debacle either way.

Just then, the shadow cloud clenched and began to change.