The Dark Between The Stars

EIGHTY
AELIN

Full of wonder, Aelin arrived with Iswander at the ekti-extraction yard that accompanied the moving bloater cluster, and the industrialist gave him a full tour of the operations. Aelin felt overwhelmed with the sights and experiences.

“You cannot reveal anything about our operations, green priest,” Iswander cautioned him for the third time, “but it’s important for you to understand the full scope of what we’re doing here.”

Aelin recognized that the man was showing a remarkable amount of trust in him. While he understood the necessity for keeping secrets from Iswander’s competitors, he found it disorienting to withhold thoughts and impressions from the worldforest network, acting only as a passive observer. After growing up in the wide-open worldforest, he was not well practiced in keeping secrets, but he kept his word to Lee Iswander.

He knew his brother must be in a similar situation on the mysterious Onthos city. Shelud had delivered reports of the vanished aliens and the interesting discoveries aboard the derelict, which the worldforest had translated, but he had given no details about the location of the new clan Reeves home of Okiah.

Neither brother could share his wondrous and amazing secrets, but Aelin and Shelud could share their excitement, if nothing else. Though they had disagreed in philosophy, they both found themselves in similar situations. Aelin realized that they might be closer than he expected.

Out here at the extraction field, bloaters drifted along in empty space, with a clear trajectory toward the nearest star, which was only a brighter spot in the forest of twinkling stars. The bloater cluster had no obvious means of propulsion, but it was accelerating.

Aelin stared out at the mysterious nodules floating together. Even the verdani knew nothing about them; he had searched the entire worldforest database, while being careful not to reveal where he was or what he knew.

As he watched the drifting bloaters, Aelin could sense something there, a distant slumbering force, a brooding… presence. No one believed those gas bags were actually alive, but they did not seem to be a mere natural phenomenon either. Iswander, who considered them nothing more than space plankton, had promised that as soon as his operations were stabilized and running smoothly, he would bring in scientific teams for a full analysis, but so far he concentrated on the extraction. There would be time enough for the rest later.

When returning from Theroc, Iswander brought in six more tanker ships, which he used to drain raw ekti-X from the bloaters. Alec Pannebaker spent much of his time hauling away the empty, deflated husks, towing them from the rest of the cluster so they wouldn’t get in the way. Even after all the ambitious extraction efforts, many hundreds of bloaters remained, crowded close in a great drifting cloud.

After the phenomenal success of the first ekti-extraction operations, Lee Iswander established a pilot industrial station in a second bloater cluster that Elisa Enturi had located. More and more workers arrived weekly for their isolated job assignments. And they produced more and more stardrive fuel.

Aelin often remained with Lee Iswander in the admin module, trying to learn the operations. “If this cluster still has so much ekti, why was it necessary to set up a second harvesting field?”

Iswander was patient with him, explaining the business, as if Aelin were still that bright-eyed young acolyte with a broken leg. “A secondary source of ekti-X at a different part of the Spiral Arm eases our distribution bottleneck. And,” he added with just a small smile, “when our delivery ships originate from two different points, it’s more difficult to backtrack our source. That should let us keep our secrets longer.”

Iswander stretched his arms. “I have to take advantage of this boom and bank my fortune while I can. It’s such a simple operation, sometimes I think this is too good to be true. As soon as bloaters are discovered elsewhere—and somebody will stumble upon a cluster—then anyone can harvest ekti-X. So much for our edge on the market. If there’s such a glut, our operations might not be worthwhile anymore.” He paused. “I want to keep this secret long enough to rebuild my family name, and make a future for Arden.”

As a green priest, Aelin had never bothered to consider those nuances before. He realized that Iswander had made the last comment for his son to hear, since Arden had appeared at the hatch of the admin module. The young man cast a frown toward the green priest. “Then today’s lesson should be about the ekti business, not history and legends and culture—that’s all Aelin wants to talk about.”

Because he had few actual duties in the bloater refinery yard, Aelin also tutored Iswander’s son. He was not trained as a teacher, nor had he planned a curriculum, but whenever he needed information for a lesson, he used his treeling to tap into the verdani mind.

Iswander chuckled. “That sounds exactly like my own complaints when I was your age! Trust me, son, it’s important. You need a background and a perspective on where things come from.”

“But those stories are so old they don’t mean anything,” Arden said.

Iswander shook his head and explained; Aelin couldn’t have made the argument better. “It’s the foundation of what we do—you need to understand that the whole basis of the ekti market is predicated on the Ildiran stardrive. Humans didn’t invent it. Without the gift of the stardrive, we would still be crawling across the Spiral Arm in slow generation ships. And while the Hansa was expanding their colonies, the Roamer clans earned great power by taking over cloud-harvesting operations from the Ildirans, running their old skymines, and then building new ones of their own.” He frowned at Arden. “It caused quite a bit of friction, and that’s one reason that the Roamers were looked on with skepticism—or jealousy—by the rest of the Hansa. It’s why we were made into scapegoats during the Elemental War.”

The young man was not satisfied. “That still doesn’t help.”

Aelin added, “When you’re a businessman, Arden, you’ll be dealing with other people who have the same old scars, possibly the same prejudices. You have to understand those resentments if you’re going to be a successful negotiator.”

Iswander said, “You are a part of history right now, son. Our ekti-X will change civilization in the Spiral Arm. At some future date, there will be another young man complaining about why he has to take history lessons and learn about how Arden Iswander was part of the first bloater operations.”

That seemed to convince the young man at last. Arden tugged the green priest’s elbow. “Let’s get on with it then. One hour, right?”

“Two hours,” Aelin said.

The boy started to argue. Suddenly the green priest felt a violent shiver, as if static electricity had flickered through him. He turned to see a pattern of sparkles cascade through the bloaters. One nodule lit up, then another, and another. The flashes were not connected, but they did seem to be in sequence somehow, like a signal. Each impulse lasted only a fraction of a second.

The harvesting operations quickly went into shutdown and response mode. After only a few seconds, the flashes died away again, and the bloaters were dim and silent again, grayish green islands that floated nowhere.

Pannebaker sent a signal to the admin module. “A few disruptions, Chief, but no overloads. The extra shielding helped. We’ll run diagnostics to determine any damage, but I think we’re set.”

Iswander let out a sigh. “Excellent.” He turned to the green priest. “We have to be careful. The bloaters are volatile, potentially explosive, as my deputy discovered during her first encounter. We’ve instituted rather extreme safety measures, and there’s a full evacuation protocol I can engage, in case of an emergency. But those flashes…”

The flash storms came at intermittent times, widely separated. Sometimes they were faint, while other times the dazzling surges damaged the electronics until Iswander’s people had added extra shielding. This was the first such display Aelin had seen from so close. “I wonder what it means.”

“Nothing to worry about. Just an interesting phenomenon. Now, shouldn’t you get to your duties teaching my son?”

They went into an unoccupied boardroom, and Aelin set his potted treeling across from the boy, ready to tap into the worldforest. Using telink, he touched the verdani mind and accessed information and news, while Arden waited, fidgeting.

Within moments, he received a devastating report from the trees: Shelud and all the members of clan Reeves aboard their alien space city had been exposed to a mysterious plague.